Older news.Reproduction is a basic human right that's being deined.According to NPR, women in China are being forced to have abortions as late in nine months into the pregnancy. I've heard horrible things about China's one child per family rule before, but this is absolutely heartbreaking. NPR also says that there are forced sterilizations being carried out as well.According to this book, poor men and women in India are being pressured (and paid fairly small sums of money) to have sterilizations to fill government sterilization quotas. The right to reproduce - or any part of a person's body - is not a saleable good. Taking advantage of people in such dire straits is inexcusable. The right to not have children - through abstinence or contraception - is a basic human right. The right to have children is just as basic a right - maybe even more so, because technology is denying it instead of granting it. At any rate, both deserve to be protected and upheld unconditionally. If this issue pisses you off as much as it does me, please consider going to an organization like Amnesty International and writing some letters to people who can make some changes. Thanks. Posted 11/12/2007. Communist Mutants From SpaceApparently there's a game called Communist Mutants From Space for the old Atari 2600. From the manual: Your mission: Vaporize the mutant warriors before they overrun your home planet. The evil ruler of the planet Rooskee has launched a diabolical attack. A cunning Mother Creature, filled with irradiated vodka, transforms helpless slaves captured on peaceful planets into bloodthirsty COMMUNIST MUTANTS.Yes, irradiated vodka. Why haven't I heard about this sooner? Hey, by the way, new music is coming soon. Really. Posted 10/25/2007. Crisps vs. chips vs. fries vs. the Gaelic League (in which I discuss linguistics and Irish nationalism through snack foods)Even though most chips are referred to as "crisps" in Ireland, there are a few brands, such as Hunky Dorys, whose packages refer to them as "chips." The Hunky Dorys website, though, calls them "crisps," so I think it's basically the same thing. Fries are often called chips, but sometimes not. "Fries" in Ireland are skinny fries, like you'd get at a burger joint, while "chips" are what we'd call steak fries here. (Incidentally, I've never had a steak that came with steak fries, or had steak fries with steak. The whole thing never made much sense to me.) So: crisps are sometimes chips, chips are sometimes fries, but crisps are never fries and fries are never crisps. Got that?I just finished the bag of Cheese & Onion Hunky Dorys that I brought home from Ireland, so I've been hunting for a way to get more someday. I found a site that sells them, but I'd have to buy a lot more than $6 worth of chips (crisps?) to make the $11ish for shipping worth it. While I was looking for that, I came across a crude, harsh, and incredibly witty Irish blog called "Arse End of Ireland." The lady who writes it has lots of interesting things to say about politics, celebrities, nightlife, Irish culture, and lots of other stuff. The Irish are very proud to be Irish - not that I blame them, 'cause they've fought tooth and nail to maintain their culture (see the GAA and the Gaelic League, among others) in the face of British rule, globalization, Grease (which pub bands love to cover), and American burger joints, among other things. There are two McDonald's[es?], two Burger Kings, and two Johnny Rocket's[es?] on O'Connell street, the main road in Dublin. The Irish probably got the word "crisp" from England (along with the rest of the English language, I'd suppose), which might explain their occasional reluctance to use the thing. Posted 9/1/2007. Idiom idiocyWhy is it that "See you soon" and "See you later" mean more or less the same thing, but "See you sooner or later" means something completely different?Outside of a restaurant in Dublin, there was an electronic sign that advertised "Friendly and homely service." Admittedly, the women in Dublin were pretty disappointing (FYI: wearing two pounds of makeup and a belly shirt doesn't automatically make you hot). For whatever reason, Dublin also has far fewer redheads than you'd expect. People get a lot more attractive as you move outside of the city centre, though. Only a few more days 'til I'm back in Beantown. I really want to have the new design up and running by then, but we'll see if I can get Wordpress integration worked out. Posted 8/25/2007. Why can't Wii get games like Space Giraffe?I'm dying to play Space Giraffe, a quirky, trippy shooter that just came out on XBox live arcade at a price of $5, which makes $25 to import each of those simplistic (but still fun) Bit Generations games look like highway robbery. Sans Xbox, though, there's little chance of that happening for me. I'm thinking about buying a Wii, but games like Space Giraffe (not to mention Alien Hominid HD and Lumines Live) are making that decision kinda difficult, because the 360 seems to be king of the hill when it comes to exciting, original downloadable games.Wasn't the Wii supposed to be doing this kind of thing? The ability to play innovative games is a large part of the system's appeal, and the Wii's relatively low price tag seems to jibe with the idea of getting games like SG for five bucks the day they come out. Besides that, a lot of these games aren't exactly pushing the 360's 3D hardware, and I'd imagine that they could be ported to the Wii with few compromises. Sure, I could get a 360 core system for $279, but I'd have to buy a hard drive in order to play downloadable games. No, your only choice is to shell out $350 in order to play a $5 game. The $250 Wii has enough built in flash memory for tons of games, but WiiWare won't be live until 2008. Never mind that a lot of the old-school downloadable games out there are best played with a d-pad, and that the 360's d-pad is mounted on a circle, which makes in clunkier than the Wii's (although still miles ahead of my Dreamcast's pointy, bulky, awkwardly-placed pad). With a low price, innovative motion controls as well as a (reportedly) fantastic D-pad for old-school games, cheap dev kits, and the ability to buy games online, the Wii was supposed to be a godsend for indie developers. Folks are still saying that, and they might turn out to be right. Nintendo tends to play its cards close to its chest, and maybe in 2008 they'll reveal a fantastic online store full of cool indie games. Right now, the only game that's been announced is something called "Plattchen Twist 'n' Paint." Xbox Live Arcade has had a heck of a head-start, and now they've got a stable full of cool, exclusive titles. I'd rather be able to buy a new, innovative game for cheap than get a system that offers me the opportunity to buy Super Mario Brothers again. The quirky, original titles that the Wii does have are boxed (e.g. Blast Works), so they're a lot less cheap and plentiful than they are on the 360. I'm holding off on buying any systems right now partly because I want to see how this turns out, and partly because I need that money to go to things like buying groceries, going out, and paying bills. Please, Nintendo, make Wii Ware good. I don't care about Halo 3 or Bioshock, and I don't want to shell out extra money if I don't have to. I just want to play innovative, interesting, relatively simple games, along with and maybe some Wii Sports or Super Mario Galaxy. I really hope Nintendo has something great in store for WiiWare: My Dreamcast controllers are starting to crap out, and I'd like to buy a modern system someday. Posted 8/23/2007. Back in the US! Also: a near-death experience for a surround sound system. And: video games in the Soviet UnionWell, I've actually been back for a few weeks and just haven't gotten around to posting. I've adjusted to things like higher water pressure, massive supermarkets, and the suburbs. Ireland has has some suburbs and stuff, but a lot of the place is flat-out country, with a sparse sprinkling of little houses and farms and stuff. Outside of Dublin, people are so spread out that they don't use street numbers; you just write the name of the person or business and the town name (maybe a county too) when you send a letter. I'm not a huge fan of the suburbs, but I'll be heading back to Boston soon, this time for good.In other news, I'm working on new music. I'm not sure when it'll be done, but I almost blew out someone's surround sound system while working on the song, so that's got to be a good sign. I had set the volume way too high in a compression program that I was playing with, but luckily Overloader's burst protection saved my butt. Also, an adventure game that I worked on called Captain Hero got reviewed. I'm flattered that someone liked it enough to review it, and the criticisms they made are pretty valid. Random game dump: I finally got a copy of Orbital from a game store called Pink Godzilla. I ordered online (the shipping was incredibly fast), and apparently they run a brick-and-mortar store too. It's cool to see that there are a few independent game stores left, but I wish there were some in my area. In Orbital, you control a little planet floating around space. By pressing the A and B buttons, you can attract yourself towards planets or repel yourself away from them. The goal is to "absorb" other planets or get them to orbit you, and eventually to grow big enough to absorb the sun. The game gets pretty challenging, and you can change direction, speed up or slow down, etc. just by playing with gravity. It's kind of a slow-paced game - you spend a lot of time just waiting for momentum to carry you along - and the sound and graphics are minimal. Still, it's an unique concept, and it's a lot of fun if you're willing to take five minutes to learn it. I've also been playing some wacky Soviet-style games like Where's an Egg? and Super Soviet Missile Mastar. The real Soviet Union had games too, including some really old ones and a game called Perestroika that's apparently a metaphor for an economic restructuring of the same name. Posted 8/20/2007. Housing prices in IrelandHere are some stats about average prices for Housing in Ireland (scroll down to the orange boxes for the hard numbers). 5-bedroom housing in the North or South side of the city (i.e. 15 minutes to half an hour from the city centre) will run you close to a million euro (~$1.4 mil), while similar accommodations in the city's "commuter towns" are around half a million euro. Note that the average commute time in Dublin is around 70 minutes for people who live somewhere in the city, so living in a commuter town would make getting to work tough. It sounds like the housing bubble's about to burst, though, so hopefully that works out.I'm off to Scotland for the weekend... hopefully things are safer there after recent terrorism incidents in the UK. Posted 7/6/2007. Poverty in DublinWe've got poverty and homelessness in Boston - men in blankets outside the Back Bay T station, huddled in stairwells and ATM lobbies - but there's something striking about the people begging on the streets of Dublin: they seem to be mostly women and children, and often the women have small babies at their sides. Cross the river Liffey in the center of the city and chances are you'll see someone sitting on the bridge with an empty cup. Walk out of a Church after Sunday Mass, and there might be three or four women - all with small babies at their sides - asking for money. There are kids sitting on cardboard panels underneath ATMs, where there's no excuse to give a Euro or two.At first I was a little suspicious. Is there an abusive parent putting these kids up to this? One girl walked up to me as I was going down a side street and blocked my way before she asked for change. The aggressiveness is a little unnerving - but then again, if I were starving, I'd be aggressive about trying to get food too. It's possible that these people are Travelers, a ethnic minority in Ireland of nomadic people. A friend of mine called them gypsies... that's probably not quite accurate - and I think it's probably not a very good term to describe anyone - but the rough idea probably fits. Or maybe they're just folks who have gotten the short end of the stick with Ireland's booming economy. Sure, jobs in things like high tech and pharmaceuticals are booming, and to some extent that probably trickles down to places that hire less-skilled workers, but Dublin remains a pricey city to live in. Groceries are more expensive than they are in the states, and they would be so even if you just pasted a dollar sign over the euro symbol and left the numbers the same. Dublin is one of the world's most expensive cities to buy land in (it's to the point that it's getting obscene), and presumably that trickles down to renting too. The EU is working to keep inflation down - but that means interest rates are going up, which will make life tougher for people who do own homes. Hopefully, the people who say that home prices will go down as a result of the increasing interest rates are right. Otherwise, a lot of people are going to be stuck in run-down housing projects like Ballymun Flats. Ireland is a beautiful place with lots of cool things going on, and its economy is probably better than most countries'. It's a fine place to be if you've got the education to hop onto the back of the Irish Tiger, but a lot of folks are getting left behind. But one in ten kids live in poverty in Ireland, you know something's not right. I'm not sure how to fix it, and I've got a lot more questions than answers. I guess someplace like Boston's Pine Street Inn or Ireland's Dublin Simon Community would be somewhere to start, but the problem is so large that it seems overwhelming. All I know is that even in the world's most prosperous countries - here and at home - far too many people live in poverty. It's been said over and over and over to the point that it's cliché, so I know that logically, kids begging on the street really shouldn't be too surprising. It doesn't work that way, though. Seeing a child of nine or ten begging on the street is like looking at an MC Escher painting: at first, it seems so fundamentally not right that you could spend hours trying to wrap your mind around it. But all you have to do is step back and not look too closely, and suddenly everything seems fine. Posted 6/27/2007. Meme-a-riffic!If you've poked around around the Internet enough, you've probably come across LOL Cats and even LOL Bots. But LOL President takes things to an entirely new level... it takes the delicious inanity that the Internet is known for and gives it some bite and intelligence. I wish I'd thought of it. I'd be a millionaire! Or, um, maybe just knee-deep in server bills.Also, pics from Saint Stephen's Green, Glendalough, and other places will be up once I get the new design running and get a gallery system up that's a little more easier on my web hosting than Gallery2 was. Gallery2 has lots of cool features, but my server got hammered faster than a Bostonian on Saint Patrick's Day. Posted 6/7/2007. ragingmime3 previewI'm still working to integrate my code with WordPress, but the actual design is done. Have a gander if you'd like. Posted 6/4/2007.I made it to Dublin! (And then I made some so-so Italian food.)I'm pretty jet-lagged and frazzled, but I made it. The area that I'm in is really nice, but I still feel like I'm in the "Irish" part of Epcot or something, not the for real Ireland. Once I get into the city (or the country!) more, though, I think it'll kick in. The tasty scone I had for breakfast (as well as the salty, artificial-tasting pork rashers that I tried to work into a pasta dish) couldn't have come from anywhere else.Fun fact: although the Irish have some incredible writers (and rugby players, apparently), they seem to have conceded defeat when it comes to food. On my Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, my dinner options were chicken cacciatore or ravioli. Even the salad had Italian dressing on it. It's not just Italy, though: how about Captain America's Cookhouse, conveniently located in Dublin? It's weird to go to an exciting foreign country and find that (at least some) people think we're cool. I'm staying on the outskirts of Dublin, but I'll be heading into the city proper tomorrow. Should be interesting. Updates might be sporadic because I'm pretty sure I blew out my electrical outlets when I tried to use an adapter to put an American power strip in an Irish socket. There was smoke and a loud pop, which I think means bad things. Anyway, I have to charge my laptop in the kitchen now, so things are going to be tricky until I can get that fixed. ragingime.com 3.0 is well underway, but we'll see whether I have time to finish it soon. More to come! Posted 5/25/2007. Working on music (also: chiptune!)New music is in the works, but it's slow going. I had to scrap a good chunk of the track, but after a couple of months, I've gotten a pretty hook together. Now the trick is going to be to figure out how to build up to that part of the song and what I'm going to do on the way. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do for that, but hopefully I'll wind up with a good dancefloor-ready track. It's been too long since I've done one of those.I've been listening to Trash80's incredibly fun Hologram EP a lot lately. The songs are heavily layered and very danceable - think Basement Jaxx, but with more of a focus on the electronics, particularly flourishes and arpeggios recorded from an old Nintendo. Trash80 manages to work in the simple 8-bit noises in a way that makes them sound downright sexy. 8bitpeoples, the chiptune label that released the record (for free!), has a catalog that can be kind of hit-or-miss, but Hologram is definitely a hit. When I do 8-bit style sounds, I usually use Tweakbench's Triforce soft synth to mimic NES sounds. It sounds pretty good and less of a hassle than using a Nintendo tracker and hacking the hardware to get clean sound out of it as Trash80 does. I tip my proverbial hat to him. (I can't wear actual hats because I usually look horrible in them.) Also, the guy who made the Dr. Who theme song is awesome. Okay, I'm off to get some sleep now. Wonderful, wonderful sleep. Posted 5/18/2007. Destination: Dublin!Next week, I'm heading off to Ireland for two months. It's a little bit nerve-wracking... I'm living with a bunch of people I don't know in a city I know little about. It'll be an adventure if nothing else, though, and I'm hoping to come back with a cool accent and maybe some scones. I'll let you folks out in blogland know how it goes. Posted 5/18/2007.The nicest graffiti I've ever seen I saw this written on a door today. It made me smile. In other news, I spent a little while getting Wordpress and Gallery set up on my server. Hopefully I can get these integrated into the site so that I can post stuff more easily and use spiffy features like comments and trackbacks and other shiny whatzits. Also, hopefully I can figure out what to do with all the white space that shows up every time I post a picture. Posted 5/7/2007. Of Mice and (Mega) MenI seem to have developed this habit of getting into things after they stopped being new and trendy but before they're dated enough to be "old-school." Not only did I not jump on the bandwagon, but the bandwagon left town and made it halfway to China before I even realized that it existed.First it was cult hits like N, Cave Story, and Every Extend that made their way through a gazillion "free indie games" lists and Radiohead's blog before I tried them. All are excellent, and in particular Cave Story really sucked me in with its old-school but still original design, simple but moving story (with, I think, more than a little allegory about why we really fight), memorable characters, catchy music and incredible, almost obsessive attention to detail. Did I mention that this was made by one guy over the course of like 5 years? Anyway, my current addiction is Sega's puzzle game Chu Chu Rocket. I think it took, what, seven years after its release date before I finally picked up a copy? It's based on a very simple idea: you place arrows to guide mice away from cats and into rockets. The game starts off easy enough but gets progressively tougher. There's a really insane multiplayer mode where four people (or computer players) are all directing mice into their own rockets. Every twenty seconds or so, a "special" mouse introduces some new twist: suddenly, cats instead of mice are streaming onto the screen. Wait, now the mice are back but there's twice as many. Wait, now everybody's switched positions. Wait, now the mice have turned invisible and you have to guess what you're doing. This goes on for a very frenzied two minutes. If you don't feel like hunting down the Game Boy or Dreamcast versions of the game, Sega produced a free online version of the game that's available here. It's only got one of the four modes of the full game, but it's fun all the same. I also finally had a listen to Prodigy's 1994 record Music for the Jilted Generation, which is apparently some kind of rave classic. It's no Kraftwerk or anything but it's a lot of fun for what it is. The album isn't deeply moving or anything, but it's full of fun, creative, spazzy rave tracks that don't sound nearly as dated as you'd expect. And if you get sick of music that is intended mainly for dancing, there is an ambitious, trippy, three-track "Narcotic Suite" at the end that seems to predict the whole psytrance/goa movement before the genres were even really founded. Hopefully their upcoming record will have more fun, inventive tracks like this and less of the arena-ready rock crossover stuff that they've been doing since Fat of the Land came out. I'm still working on the Rockman Nova project... the board seems pretty dead by this point, which I'm assuming is because most people have lost interest or gotten too busy with other stuff. I'm still plugging away, though, and I'm hoping that a flashy new version will be able to attract people back to the project. Hopefully, this one will include a rudimentary level design kit so that it'll be easy for other people to participate. (It's been, what, a year since the last release?) We'll see, I guess. I'm shooting to have this done by the end of the month, because I've got big plans that'll be kicking in a little while after that. I'll post news about that plan in the upcoming weeks. Posted 5/2/2007. New version of "Take Care"I've been working on this song on-and-off since last summer, and I think it's just about done. It starts off with some simple, syrupy synths and then progresses to some bittersweet piano melodies. I'm proud of the piano stuff 'cause it took me forever to write, although hopefully I didn't neglect the synths in the process. The track was made with Buzz and a few nifty VST plugins.Click over to the music page to listen/download. The track is also posted on EM411. Posted 4/14/2007. New music player + disturbing Nintendo headline + Bush & Congress duking it out = WIN!!!I've set up a new flash music player on the music page. The program comes courtesy of Jeroen Wijering's snazzy Flash MP3 Player. In other news, I tried so hard not to make obvious jokes about the Nintendo Wii's name, and then this article showed up: Nintendo's Wii Gets Hearts Pumping For YMCA's Kids. Curse you, Nintendo! (...although maybe not your snazzy minimalist Bit Generations games, which unfortunately remain Japan-only.) [Edit: I wrote this when I probably should've been in bed. The headline isn't quite as funny when I'm not sleep-deprived.]Okay, now I probably should mention something that's actually significant in some way. The New York Times has an excellent piece on George Bush's battle with congress over the firing of prosecutors and the principle of executive privilege. If past comparisons Iraq to Vietnam weren't bad enough, now they're comparing this scandal to Watergate. I really wanted not to hate Bush. I really, really did. Bushism Calendar notwithstanding, I wanted to judge him on his policies and actions, not on his fantastic PR slip-ups. Truth be told, the economy has done pretty well during his presidency, although you could probably get a whole think tank full of economists arguing for years over whether that's his accomplishment or just the economy bouncing back from the burst of the dot com bubble and continuing its general upward trend. I was happy that he eased up on farm subsidies, freeing up money for programs to protect the environment. (Plus, this is the administration that gave us MC Rove. That's got to be worth something). Then again, I tend to like pretty much everyone (or dislike all politicians equally; take your pick), and President Bush is making it harder and harder for even me to like him. I'm glad to see Saddam Hussein out of power, but the way we got him out was probably a bad idea and shows a lack of respect for, I don't know, national sovereignty. It's wasted valuable human life (not to mention an obscene amount of money), and it feels like every other day, Bush and his political allies are getting in trouble for political impropriety. I saying that I think it would would be a great thing if the pendulum swung all the way back to the left, though (although I think it probably will at this rate). I consider myself a moderate, so I try my best not to get caught up in political hysteria, but I'll be damned if I'm not looking forward to 2008. Posted 4/13/2007. Captain Hero Lives!I've finally, finally finished Captain Hero: Operation Key Lime, a game that I started a year and a half ago with a couple other people. It's an old-school action-adventure game with a wacky story and lots of puzzles and bad guys, not to mention a gambling system. The graphics are pretty simple, so a lot of the story and atmosphere is conveyed through snarky narration. It's meant as a parody of all the over-the top spy movies that are out there. (That's why it takes place in Vladistachinstaninburgensteinistan - the country/region that takes the place of the generic "enemy" in these movies keeps changing, so I figured I'd just roll 'em all into one.)I've been trying to break up the text with images once in a while, so here are some screens:       Also, you might notice that I've changed the formatting of titles on the news page. You might also notice that I've gone through and added titles to every single archived post in the news system. One way or another, I'm gonna drag this site into the 21st century. Posted 3/14/2007. Snow RoseI snapped a picture of something I saw the other day (click for a bigger version). "Show us your what?!"Boston University is running a Contest that's named "Show Us Your Blogs." The title sounds a little like what drunk guys would shout at a Girls Gone Wild shoot... normally I'd call it just a weird coincidence, but the picture accompanying the contest is a picture of a guy ripping open his shirt to reveal a T-shirt with the contest's name. So unless I'm missing something, BU's running a contest whose title makes a joke about asking girls to take off their shirts. I'm not offended or anything, but it does sound a little tacky coming from a major university. It's still nothing compared to Microsoft's "Get Some Action (For your business)" ads. Again, I'm not upset... it just seems weird and inconsistent with the way the company usually presents itself.And really, people don't need to use sex to sell everything from clothes (both hipster and preppy) to soda, gum, cars, and pretty much everything else. This sort of marketing turns what should be an intimate act of love into just another way to move product. Honestly, give it a rest. (By the way, it probably won't surprise you to know that the guy who runs Girls Gone Wild is a huge jerk). Rant mode is now off! Posted 2/10/2007. Research on turning gay sheep straightA while ago, someone E-mailed me a link to an article about scientists who are trying to turn gay sheep straight. I think they're doing it to make breeding more efficient, but it's still pretty creepy. Here was my response:If it's just for sheep, I guess worse things have been done in the name of increasing farm productivity (although I'm not a fan). I think it might not be too useful to apply these findings to humans... animal mating behavior tend to be specific hard-coded patterns. Human behavior is much more varied, complex, and spontaneous. The guy who talks about allowing parents to "to raise the sort of children they want to raise" is pretty unnerving, though... I feel like this is akin to selecting a child's gender, personality, or physical features. This isn't just creepy on a visceral level; it would be an attempt to fit children into perfect little molds. People are inherently messy and complicated, and children probably rarely turn out exactly as their parents envision. That's probably for the best: the messy little complexities are what make us interesting, gives us the potential to do great things, and above all makes us human. It's also worth noting that The Register (where the article appeared) always goes out of its way to rile people up a little, and this article is no different. Posted 2/6/2007. ExcusesWow, it's been a while since I've updated... sorry about that. Suffice it to say that life has been totally insane lately. I mean, even more so than usual. I've been working on new music, a new version of Motorbiker (which I think might be renamed "Battle Bikers" or something catchier), and the final version of Captain Hero. None of those things is done, but I did manage to put together a new Teaser page for Captain Hero, with hot-off-the-presses screenshots and a description and stuff. Hopefully things will calm down in a few weeks and I can be more productive, but for the time being, please accept as an apology this page of gummy bears photographed in rather suggestive positions. I mean, really, what was the Internet made for if not that? Also: Sordid City Blues is awesome lately... he's doing a comic based on St. John of the Cross's poem "The Dark Night," and it's incredible. Definitely check it out. Posted 12/10/2006.New Music: Take CareI've finally posted a new song on the music page. (Look in the music player for a track called "Take Care"). It starts off with some syrupy, Nintendo-ey synth lines, then veers off into something completely different. I'm pretty happy with the piano melodies near the end. It's still not completely done (I'm thinking maybe I need a better transition for the change near the end, and hopefully I can make the song a little longer), but at least it's something. New versions of Transistor Sea and Ghost Groove are also in the works. (And by "in the works," I mean I worked on them over the summer and they'll surface eventually.) Also, big(ish) news! The remix I produced for the dance-punk band citation:obsolete will be appearing on their new, limited-edition "Series One.5" EP. More info is on the band's Myspace page... apparently you can pick it up at shows and stuff, and eventually it'll be up for order online. The band's still working on a page with info about the CD... I'll link to that when it's done. As with all of the band's music, my remix is under a Creative Commons license, so it's free for non-commerical sharing and sampling. As far as I know, they're waiting until the CDs sell out before they post the tracks online, but the remix will rear its head eventually. Other cool stuff: there's a small, tentative chance that I might possibly be DJing in Boston at the end of the month. I'll post here if anything comes through. --- September was a pretty intense month, and a lot of stuff changed and ended and began, right up through today. (Which, I guess, is October now). You know that song that goes "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end?" It was kinda like that. Posted 10/2/2006.New Design!The new design is finally up! Hopefully, it should make navigating a little easier... I've reorganized some stuff, and there's a new flash player for music, a cleaner downloads page, and lots of new links. (If I remember correctly, I don't think I've updated the links since 2002. Yeesh.) I've also added "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Dead" to the music page... I produced and linked to it last Halloween, but I just added it the music page on my site. I'm going to miss the retina-searing green checkerboard of my old site, but it was time for a change, and I'm pretty happy with the (somewhat) more mature look. (Maybe I'll even start writing blog-ey posts instead of just saying, "Hey! I posted a file!") As always, you can E-mail me with comments (it's ragingmime AT ragingmime.com now) on the music or games or design or whatever. I'd like to get a commenting system in here too, but that'll have to wait until another time. Hopefully I'll also be able to finish up a few more little projects before the summer comes to a close. And what a weird, wonderful, painful, and overall interesting summer it's been. I kinda grew a lot, so it should be interesting to see where things go from here. And of course, there's more to come. There's always more to come... I hope you folks out in Internet-land will join me for it. Posted 8/23/2006.Design IdeasI've put together some new designs for this site but I haven't decided which one to use yet, so I figured I'd post them all. That's content, right? Some of them are more mature and serious-looking, but I figure I've grown up since 2002; maybe my website should too. Here they are: 1, 2, 3, 4. Anyway, let me know whatcha think: ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. Posted 8/11/2006.New DomainIf you can read this, you probably know that I've switched over to a new domain name: ragingmime.com. This will make a lot of things easier... plus it looks cooler than a dot tk domain (although the .tk people are pretty good at what they do). Also, I'm getting rid of ads because they haven't gotten many clicks and look kinda tacky. Other little tweaks will probably follow as I try to bring this almost four-year-old (!) site up to date. Okay, I'll have some actual new content on here soon, I swear! Posted 8/10/2006.In the PipelineI'm changing things around with domains, so if the site is down over the next couple of weeks, that's why. It shouldn't be, but if something unexpected comes up, now you know why. So there you have it. In the meantime, try going through www.ragingmime.tk (instead of rmime.sublimecms.com, which I'm transitioning out of) if you have problems. Once all the dust clears, things should be better. I'm sorry updates have been kinda slim lately... I am working on stuff; I just can't post it yet. The remix is totally finished, but I'm waiting to find out whether the band likes it. One way or another, you'll be able to hear it if you so choose. Also, I've been working on Captain Hero again... I'm shooting to have it done before the summer's over. (Which is less time than it seems like it should be...) There's a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline, so stick around! Posted 8/7/2006.RemixSo I'm checking my E-mail, and this is what comes up in my inbox: New Motorbiker!It's been a year since I posted a new version of Motorbiker, so I figured that an update was in order. I also listed Rockman Nova on the downloads page, so you can grab that too. As always, comments are appreciated: contact ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. Posted 6/5/2006.Mega Man projectVersion 0.5 of the Mega Man fangame that I'm working on, Rockman Nova, is now available. Check out a feature list here or just download the game. Yes, I'm a dork. No, I don't care. More to come! [edit:] I probably should have said our game, not my game, because there are a lot of people involved with it besides me. Or, um, there were anyway. A lot of folks seem to be leaving, so if you'd like to visit the message board (see the link above) and help out, now would be a good time. Posted 5/16/2006.Goals and stuffOkay, so I finally have some free time again, and I think it's about time to set some goals. Some of those are kinda mundane (e.g., I'm trying to find a job), but you might be interested in others. I'm promising myself that I'll finally finish my album, which I've been working on for like three years now. I don't have any new songs yet (that kinda got pushed to the back burner), but here's some of the Cover Art that I made for it. There's still a lot left to be done, but I've got a track listing together, and most of the songs are completely written and produced. There are eleven songs so far, plus (maybe) a hidden song. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to include Tune in, Turn on, Drop Dead on the CD because the Acidplanet license says that once I create the remix, it's the property of the record companies/bands. Unfotrunately, I didn't read through all the fine print until after I'd produced the remix. Technically, I'm not even allowed to host it on my website for free, which is dumb... the bands don't benefit from that, just Acidplanet... and they didn't make the original songs or the remix. I actually got the okay from two of the four bands involved, but the others haven't responded... I don't think they'd really mind, but the last thing I need is to get my butt sued off because of this song. The Listen page hasn't been updated lately, but at least it's still there. ... Hopefully I'll be able to finish the latest version of Rockman Nova soon, and I'll get that up here too. ... Now, on a totally different topic: the National Guard's "Hooah! Palooza" page (see below) is down, but I did come across some photos from the event. They're pretty surreal, and you can tell that the National Guard folks cherry-picked the photos that have people who look like Abercrombie models in them. Like I said, I know the people there are legal adults and can make their own decisions, but it still seems weird that the National Guard is marketing military service at spring break. Yay for war! Whoo-hoo, party! Yeah! ...except, y'know, people die and stuff. I know people who are serve in the military, and I am deeply grateful to them. But I think that presenting the National Guard like it's some sort of party squad is misleading and demeans those who are part of it. ... Are these rants interesting or offtopic? Let me know: ragingmime@yahoo.com. Geez, maybe I should install some kind of comment system in here. Oh, also, you should definitely check out Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, because they play really fun, dance-ey indie music. They're kinda like the one-man dance act LCD Soundsystem, except without a stick up his hipster butt. (Much) more to come! Posted 5/8/2006.Rockman Nova updateWhoops, I'm due for an update. Luckily, Rockman Nova 0.4 is out, so I have something new for you. If you're curious about this Mega Man fangame, you can read up on it here. RMN has kinda taken over the time that I've used for online stuff, and between that and my "real life" I haven't had a chance to do much stuff with Motorbiker and music and the other stuff that I've been working on. Hopefully that situation will change in a few months, but we'll see. Feel free to pop on the RMN boards or E-mail me at ragingmime [at] yahoo.com if you love or hate what's up here. Posted 3/30/2006.Rockman NovaIn case you're curious what I've been up to but don't want to poke around message boards, here's something I've been working on:Message Board, the National Guard, etc.The new Rockman Nova Board is up and running - come over and say hi! On a completely unrelated topic, the National Guard is having a series of recruiting events set up as spring break parties. I'm not sure how to feel about this: on the one hand, the people who go can probably figure out that the army isn't hosting games and giving away prizes just to be nice. On the other hand, the last time I checked, military service wasn't party time, and these events might send the wrong message. And as for the idea of pulling college students in with the promise of fun and sun and then trying to sell them on the military... there's something unnerving about that. I haven't been to the so-called "Hooah! Palooza" and don't plan to, but it seems like a setup for a bait-and-switch. I certainly respect and am thankful to those who have chosen to serve in the military, but I take issue with some of their recruiting tactics. Posted 2/21/2006.In Soviet Russia, bike rides you!So I got on a stationary exercise bike today, and it felt like I was becoming part of the Borg... it turns out that the bike is powered by the rider's pedaling a clever idea that turns the whole workout into a mutual symbiotic relationship: the human gets rid of a few excess calories and builds muscle, the machine gets free energy. ... There's a point in the workout program where the screen says "Resistance will raise to reach target heart rate," but I could've sworn that for a second it actually flashed, "Resistance is futile." ... As I pedaled, I thought about how great it would be if such a machine could power a computer so that I could surf the Internet while I worked out. I stopped this train of thought when I realized that such an arrangement would make me completely part of the machine: with my body turning 180 kilocalories of its energy into 41.7 watt-hours for the bike and the mind plugged into the communal hive-mind that is the Internet, I would succumb completely to the Borg. What would happen if you added intravenous nutrients and installed World of Warcraft? Such an arrangement might make us loathe to leave the comforting arms of the Borg to venture into the real world. ... Of course, my immediate response to these thoughts was to go online and post this blog entry. ... In other news, work contines on the Rockman Nova demo (download here), but it's kind of discouraging how little response it's gotten on the boards. [Edited to change the link to the new board. Old board is here. If you like it, please post some response or critique - I thrive on feedback, and if it seems like nobody's playing the demo or looking forward to new versions, that makes it much harder for me to justify spending hours working on the thing. E-mail is appreciated too: ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. ... That's all my ranting for today. Have a good one. Posted 2/18/2006.New ProjectHey, I've actually updated something! Check out Rockman Nova version .2! It has a nifty new title screen, mouse aiming, and improved background graphics. Let me know what you think on the Rockman Nova Board. More to come! Posted 2/12/2006.New ProjectHeya! It's been a while since I've posted news on here. I've actually been working on a bunch of things over the past month, but nothing's finished yet. One thing I can post right now is the Rockman Nova demo (download here). Yeah, it's fan game, and it's pretty simple so far... we'll see if it takes off. I know that there's a lot that is missing from the demo; it's in the very early stages, but I figure that it's a good start. If you want to help out with it, go to the Rockman Nova Messageboard. A lot of the folks who were there initially have left; we're trying to see if we can round up the troops and give this thing a second try. There's other stuff in the works, but I can't give any kind of a time frame for it so I'll wait until it's done before I post. Anyway, I'll finish up my fanboy ranting now. I hope that you're smiling right now, and if not, Magical Trevor can fix that. So until next time, Excelsior! No, scratch that; Stan Lee would sue me. Same ragingmime time, same ragingmime place! No, that's a mouthful. Here's something that is true and isn't hard to say: there's more to come! Yeah, that sounds about right. Posted 1/29/2006.ChristmasAh, the Christmas season... snow is falling, shoppers are panicking, the radio is playing that sappy song about the kid who buys the shoes... life is good. I've been hard at work on the new Motorbiker, but it still needs some polishing: the AI is a little funky sometimes, and there's flicker like nobody's business. The latter has been even more pronounced sinice I've started experimenting with transparent clouds. I guess it's time for me to suck it up and learn to use bitblt like a real programmer. Sigh. In the meantime, I do have a screenshot for you... the clouds are disabled by default, but you'll be able to turn them on in the "Custom Game" sreen. Once I work out the AI kinks I'll go ahead and post it... hopefully within a week or so. Have a great holiday season, and don't drink too much eggnog! Posted 12/22/2005.Mashup time!Heya! I've put together a mash-up kinda thing for a contest on Acid Planet. It's called Tune in, Turn on, Drop Dead. It's got a lot of creepy synth pads and some cool guitar loops, vocals, and other assorted stuff courtesy of a bunch of bands from the Drop Dead Festival. Feel free to vote for it or review it if you like it. I'm also working on a new version of Motorbiker, adding some polish and fixing some bugs. That should be on the way soon. In other news, I've been playing a lot of text adventure games (which the kids apparently call "Interactive Fiction" now). The Jesus of Nazareth text adventure is particularly amusing. Can Jesus find Mary Magdalen's lost amulet? Will he be able to persuade Matthew to join him? Only YOU can find out! Posted 11/28/2005.Happy Birthday to Me! As of today, this website is three years old. The first newspost (still in the archive, if you're curious) was made on October 25th, 2002. Back then, there was zero content, a simple design, and basically no visitors. I started posting a few little graphing calculator programs and simple electronic music, and kept adding and updating stuff on a more-or-less monthly basis. At one point I even had a little internet radio "station" (hosted, alas, by the ill-fated MP3.com. The website was eventually bought out by Cnet, all the content was deleted, and MP3.com became basically just a big ad for iTunes and Napster). I got a few little ads and links and whatnot, and people slowly started coming to poke around and download stuff. Now I'm on a paid, speedy webhost, there's some solid content, and I have plans for even more cool stuff. The number of hits still isn't huge, but the people are coming from all over the world, which is really cool. Thanks to everyone who's taken a look at this and given me feedback, and everyone who visits this site. As always, there's more to come! Posted 10/25/2005.New GameIn the interest of maintaining my monthly updating, here's the new version of Foodball. Oh, hey, ya want a link? How about this one on the Arab version of the Simpsons? I promise my next update will be a little more in-depth. :) Later. Posted 10/20/2005.New Music: Transistor SeaHeya. I'm back, and I've got new music for you over on the listen page. The new song is called "Transistor Sea", and it's got a bunch of whacked-out sounds, a fun dance beat, and a synth that sounds like a warped carnival ride. Fun stuff. On the audio player, it shows up on the bottom of the list because it's in alphabetical order right now. No download for right now - I'm just streaming it because I'm still working on it. Let me know what you think: ragingmime AT yahoo.com. Thanks! Posted 9/26/2005.Yay for news scripts!If you can see this message, my news engine works. This should (in theory) allow me to do more frequent news updates, because I don't have the hassle of manually updating all the pages. Yay! Also, the listen page was broken on some browsers but should work now. I'm not a hundred percent sure what the heck I did, but it's fixed. New music is on the way very soon as soon as I get it encoded and posted (so in a day or two). In the meantime, if you are in the market for humorous videos, you would be well-served by going to Plucked From Obscurity. They are purveyors of the finest humor, and I can personally vouch for their quality, not least because I am recieving millions of dollars in illegal "kickbacks" from their posh studios. More later! Hugs! Posted 9/24/2005.8/23/05 - Well, the big news is that I've moved to a spiffy new server. Downloads should be faster, and I'll have more room for goodies. Also, I can now stream music - try this! Consider it a beta - I've still got to get things to the right bitrates and list the titles instead of the filenames - but it's there. Besides that, there's a new version of Foodball II. There's also a lot of other stuff I'm working on too; expect a new update pretty soon. As per usual, you can contact me at ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. 7/27/05 - Update time! I've posted a really early version of a game called "Foodball II." It's one of those games where you have to aim a cannon by adjusting the force and the angle. It's still kinda quirky, but it is very playable. Have a look! I've also been working with some other people on a ZZT game called "Captain Hero." We still have a bunch of work to do, so I'm going to hold off on releasing it just yet. If you're curious, though, I put together a little teaser page with screenshots and stuff. (ZZT is an old action/adventure game by Epic Games that people have used to create all kinds of clever games. Have a look at Z2 if you're curious). 6/25/05 - Whoo... I'm still here. The past month has been pretty crazy, but I still managed to find time to update. I bring you... Motorbiker 0.7! There's a lot of new stuff in there, like working barriers and AI tweaks and bugfixes galore. I owe a lot to B. for his spiffy new icon and to L. for helping me test the thing. As usual, please let me know whatcha think: ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. On an unrelated note, I recently rediscovered the independent game developer ORT Software and their (his?) super-cool shoot-em up games. They're simple but really fun, and you can play them for twenty minutes and be satisfied. In a time of in-depth, time-consuming, acronym-heavy MMORPGs and RTSs and stuff, it's kinda refreshing. Oh, and Questionable Content has been really good lately, too. How does Jeph pack so many gags into such a small space? The world may never know. (I do have a life outside of the Internet, too, but it revolves mostly around working, hanging around with friends, and trying to find open pools. It's not very interesting stuff, I assure you. Whoo-hoo summer!) I've also been writing a little more music; if it comes out okay I'll probably post it. By the way, I didn't really go two months without updating; I just messed up the timestamps on my last updates so that they looked like they went up in April instead of May. That's what I get for not using an automated news engine, I guess. Also, I've found Japanese websites such as this one to be thuroughly confusing. So yeah. I'm done. 5/21/05 - Boy howdy! There's a new Motorbiker in town, and it's got powerups and bug fixes and a new menu and all kinds o' goodies. Go check it out, and please let me know if you like it: ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. 4/6/05 - Heya. I've posted a new version of Crystal and Concrete... check it out! It's a couple of minutes longer now, and it has some nifty drums and stuff. (A few people have told me that it sounds like it could be the soundtrack to a horror movie, which makes sense: the song is all eerie and stuff). Please E-mail me and tell me if you like it: ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. Really - I don't bite! 3/14/05 - Hey! Sorry about all the craziness around here... my laptop's finally working again, and all the craziness that's been going on has subsided a little. I've managed to get time to do little bits of coding here and there, though, and after a few months I've finally finished revamping a project that I've been working on for a while. It's a game for Windows called Motorbiker, and it's finally stable and complete enough to release. There's a bunch of stuff that I'll have to add later, but it's already pretty solid and playable. (My younger brother and I spent some time goofing around with the two-player mode, and it's actually pretty fun, if I do say so myself). The game has some built-in instructions, but I'll write some more complete info on it when I get the time. Anyway, if you're interested, you can head on over and download a copy of your very own. Let me know what you think: ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. Also, on a completely unrelated note, guess who just got tickets to see Moby? To say that I'm excited would be an understatement of the grossest proportions. Also - if for some strange reason you're interested in what I've been reading - I just finished Crag Thompson's graphic novel "Blankets." It's a beautiful and honest and emotional and introspective and an incredible work of art. You can check out his website if you're so inclined. 2/16/05 - I'm having some comptuer problems right now (my laptop's screen is kinda going, and this may be the last time that I'll be able to use it for a while). For right now, I'm going to post any new updates on this message board. I've got a few things that I may post from other computers or something. Sorry for the craziness; hopefully things will be back to normal soon. 1/19/05 - Wow... I've actually been kinda productive recently. I also managed to delete the last couple of news posts in moving files between my laptop, but I was able to recover them, so everything should be back to normal now. Anyway, I've cooked up a new song called "Crystal and Concrete" that you can download if you'd like. I've been trying to make eerie-sounding songs for a while, and this one is the first that I'm really happy with, which is cool. As always, comments are greatly appreciated; send 'em to ragingmime [at] yahoo.com. Hopefully I'll also get my Motorbiker game into decent enough shape to post soon. In other news, the Pope just got a Ferrari. 1/3/05 - Happy New Year! There's a new version of "Haze" up, and I fixed some links that broke when my hit counter went down. I'm also working on a little something else; I'll post it when it's in decent shape. 12/6/04 - Whew... it's been a while since I've updated, huh? I've posted updated new music on Nuclear Soup that I believe is worthy of being checked out. I'm also cooking up a bunch of other goodies, but they'll be posted later. I'm sorry about the goofy blank popups that come up here and on Nuclear Soup - Dot TK is being weird; it's not me. And hey, is anybody excited about Moby's new album? I know I am, but I'm kinda worried too; it sounds like it could either be amazing or another Animal Rights (even though I know that album does have a bunch of devoted fans, I really prefer the stuff that came before and after that. Especially Everything is Wrong, because "Everytime You Touch Me" is an amazingly fun, sweet classic techno song). How is he not using sampled vocals?! Ah, well. More updates fairly soon, I promise. In conclusion, please go listen to Abbreviated Daylight, because they're awesome. 10/25/04 - I'm still alive, and I've posted some new music on my evil plan to rule the world, Nuclear Soup Records. Check it out! 8/14/04 - Sorry about the lack of updates recently - I've been hard at work on a bunch of stuff - for example, a new song called "Haze"! Have a listen! More later. 5/6/04 - Hey. The final version of Space Person! is up on ticalc.org here - the ZIP file listed there includes versions for both TI-83 and TI-83+, as well as a rather odd readme file. (I was in kind of a goofy mood that day). It's also on the downloads page. And lest you think that I've been slacking, I should let you know that I'm working on new music that I'll be posting when it's done. Which I hope will be soon. Until then, farewell, and always remember that no matter how strange you think something is, they'll always be able to come up with a way to make it even weirder. (If you're using Mozilla or something and you're having problems, try this link). 4/6/04 - Quick update today. I've got the new version of my graphing calculator game "Space Person!" here. Version .99 is loaded with changes and new features and stuff, and it's available for TI-83 and TI-83+. There are a few more tweaks that are going into version 1.0, but this is pretty close to what the finished product will look like. Enjoy! Also, while I'm on the topic, I'd like to post a link to this here fake news article. I'm not sure which is more entertaining - the story or the message board banter that follows it. 3/27/04 - Well, whoops. Turns out there were a few broken links on the downloads page, but they're fixed now. As a token of my apologies, please accept this link. More soon. 3/7/04 - Howdy. Sorry about the time between updates - as usual, I've been really busy. I've got new music, though: have a listen to Ghost Groove. I made it entirely using Jeskola Buzz, which was an experience. I think I might tweak the song a little more, so consider it an early version, but it's basically done. Also, I would like to announce that I have discovered the coolest thing ever (flash required). I saw it as an ad on Yahoo! a while ago - every time you load it, it hooks into Yahoo!'s search engine and lists a bunch of things that people are searching for. I don't think it's pre-generated, because every now and then a few kinda iffy searches come up. It's awesome - I could sit and watch it forever. (*Sigh*) Again, I welcome comments: ragingmime AT yahoo.com. 1/18/04 - Oooh, new music! The hard mix of Guidance is now available for your dowloading pleasure. Let me know what you think: ragingmime AT yahoo.com. Really, I'd love some E-mail! More spiffyness to follow shortly. 12/7/03 - I guess an update is in order. MP3.com apparently had its assets bought by CNET, and so the music that I had there - not to mention raging radio - is gone. They're planning on integrating an MP3.com kinda thing into download.com, but the artist pages that were there aren't going back up. Never fear, though - I've uploaded "Guidance" on this server for your listening pleasure. This version is a little longer than the one that was on MP3.com, actually - I think it works better that way. I swear I really am working on more new stuff, but I'm really busy right now, so it may not get finished and posted for a few more weeks. Until then... this! 11/8/03 - Hey. New music on raging radio. New music that's not done yet. Coming. Busy. Later. 9/17/03 - Well, it's been a while, but I'm finally posting another song. It's called The Intergalactic Lounge. Neat-o! By the way, I've been working on some other fun stuff that should be done soon... wait and see. 8/3/03 - I guess now might be a good time to mention that raging radio is up. It's not a real station, technically; it's one of those thingamajigs that MP3.com lets you set up. Even still, it has a pretty good amount of content and it's updated frequently, so it's definitely worth a listen. 6/13/03 - Well, finally. Space Person v. 0.8 is available... there are still a few things I want to add to it, and it is a fairly simple game (it's a TI-83 program written in BASIC), but I think that it's coming along nicely. Click the link for more information. Or don't... I don't care either way. 5/20/03 - 'Sup, fools? Sorry about the lack of updateage lately; I've been really busy. I've tweaked the page layout (again), and you'll notice I've got a spiffy little archive now, so you don't have to see all the news from last year on the main page. I've got a page on MP3.com with a new song called "Guidance", if you're interested. Or even if you're not. I've also got some other stuff I've cooked up that I plan on posting soon... sorry about the wait, but like I said, I've been busy. Listen to the new song, if you get a chance (please) - it's a very nice, piano-ey Euro-Dance song. I don't know why there are those white spots on the ragingmime logo on MP3.com, but whatever. It's not that big of a deal. Update: 'kay, it's fixed. 4/8/03 - Hey, everyone. Apparently there was a huge Distributed Denial of Service attack against the dot TK root DNS servers on April first. They're back up now, but some 400,000 sites went down during the attack. Dot TK has a press release here, if you're interested - they say that the FBI is looking into the attack. Sounds serious... while calling DNS root server attacks "a terrorist crime of the 21st century" seems a little severe given the DNS attacks' few long-term effects, it angers me that some schmuck would mess with thousands of people's sites just for kicks. Anyway, it seems like the problem has been fixed, and hopefully whoever decided to do this will be found out. 3/21/03 - Well, it's taken long enough... I finally finished "Don't Let the Humans Escape!" It's different from the kind of stuff I've been doing, and it's actually pretty long at over three minutes. I did have to take down the OGG version of "We Want to Eat Your Brains," though - I only have ten megabytes of space, and there just wasn't enough room. On a completely different topic, I just got a third-party Dance Dance Revolution pad (yes, I'm a loser). The instruction sheet that comes with it includes helpful hints like "Make sure to pave the cusion" and "Stop immediately if there is abnormal phenomenon in your foot, waist and back while using it." Good to know... 2/15/03 - New song... download "The Imperial Spoon Has Landed" today! I mean, not to be pushy or anything... <ramble> it's really your decision, after all, and I won't be one to force my ideas on you, and some people aren't into techno, so I respect that, and blah blah blah blah </ramble> 1/11/03 - Big update today... I've finished the layout for the downloads section, and I've uploaded a new file. This time, it's a cheesy little song called "We Want to Eat Your Brains". There are also various little tweaks in the site's code - you won't notice most of them, but there are little bits here and there that I made "nicer." I'm still working on my game - it's going to be called "Space Person!" - but I've run into a really strange bug that I can't seem to fix. I'll post the game sooner or later, but I want it to work perfectly before I do. 12/14/02 - Oooh... new navigation. It's not as complex as the first setup I'd envisioned (which involved lots of nifty graphics and javascript rollovers and stuff), but I think what's here now works better than that would - not to mention that it was simpler to code. :) As you'll probably notice, the "thoughts" and "download" sections aren't there yet. That's mainly because I don't have content for them yet, but it's coming. On a completely unrelated note, work continues on my new program (it's a game)... I'm mainly tweaking the difficlty at this point, and I'll have to make sure it runs correctly on TI-83 Silver Edition. I'm pretty busy right now, so I wouldn't expect it before Christmas. Sorry. 12/01/02 - Hey, everyone... I've added a links section. I've still got a lot of work left to do on it, but I'm happy with how it's going so far. I'm also working on a navigation scheme for the site, as well as another graphing-calculator program. (The program's actually coming out to be kinda fun.) By the way, I've decided not to post "Lines!" on ticalc.org... if you have some bizzare need to watch little lines appear on your calculator's screen, you'll have to download the program from the link below. 11/11/02 - Content here... who woulda thought? You can download my super-useless "Lines!" program for the TI-83 graphing calculator here. I'll probably make a TI-83 Plus version and post both to ticalc.org soon, but for now you can only get the program here. Enjoy! 10/25/02 - I've revamped ragingmime using CSS... it looks prettier now. Yay. Also, you can get to ragingmime by going to ragingmime.tk. Apparently, there's a little island called Tokelau that's giving away free .tk domain names... go here if you're interested. More to come... |
