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Irregular Webcomics

I’m “featured” in the News section of Irregular Webcomics today…

Weekend

Let’s see:

In archery, I increased the bow pull by 2lb and consolidated my use of the clicker - shots are now much less spread, though I’ve got an irritating habit of pulling to the left every now and then.

I played squash against Paul on Sunday and got pasted to the wall, and was cheered to discover that Paul’s father was a squash coach. I am now sore.

Lots of music on Sunday evening with Jon & Kate and some of Anna’s friends (Khaleigh and her boyfriend, whose name I have, of course, forgotten). We played an enormous variety of songs this time - Father & Son, Wish You Were Here, You Can’t Do That, Going Down, Free Man in Paris, some Credence Clearwater Revival, some Bachelor Girl, some Melissa Etheridge, and a bewildering list of others. Khaleigh’s boyfriend was about the same level as Jon, and played lead guitar, so we had lead, rhythm and bass for once.
A sudden trend of pancakes.

Doctor Who.

An urge to make a short video podcast, mostly inspired by Ze Frank’s excellent The Show.

Much programming on my svg siteswap game. I’m almost at the point of releasing a preliminary version.

I’m reading an excellent computer programming book: Head First Design Patterns. Fun and easy reading, and though I already know most of the design patterns they talk about, they give enough good examples for me to really grok them.

And I’m reading A Theory Of Fun For Game Design, which is also excellent. It talks about many of the ideas and thoughts that have been obsessing me and David MM lately. I’m applying a lot of this to my siteswap game, though it’s still early days, of course.

Finally, we’re cued up for another Ravnica/Guildpact/Dissention tourney at my place this Friday. Should be fun - I still really like the format, and there’s a lot I haven’t explored yet (I’ve never given Azoreus a run, for example, or Izzet, so it’d be interesting to force Boros/Azoreus/Izzet this time). And we want to get in a bit more play before we start getting stuck into Coldsnap.

Archery

It’s been about two weeks since I last went to archery - the trip to Canada knocked out two weekends, and I was too utterly stuffed on Wednesday morning to go. So I was really looking forward to yesterday’s archery, and it was very enjoyable indeed - 314, 285, 306, with a high score of 57 (X 10 10 9 9 9) and more scores in the 50s than ever before. The clicker is now beginning to pull its weight. My technique is going well and I’m finding a real sense of concentration and calm that I assume normally comes with meditation.

Guitar Hero

Kicked arse in guitar hero today: I’ve been stuck on the last four songs in “Hard” level for a while, so last week I decided to go on to “Expert” level anyway. And they’re not so bad. I knocked them all off up to “Sharp Dressed Man” and got stuck.

Anyway, yesterday I went back to the Hard level, and finally cracked “Frankenstein” and “Texas Flood”, and made a bit of progress with “Cowboys From Hell”. “Bark at the Moon” still seemed well out of reach.

Today, I cracked “Sharp Dressed Man” in Expert, and then went on an axe rampage, defeating almost everything up to “Crossroads”, often on the first go. Back in Hard mode, “Cowboys from Hell” fell, and then after a concerted assault, I nailed “Bark at the Moon”, with the needle deep in the red as I hit the last note. Phew. Hard mode is done, and I have only “No one knows” to finish before I’m in the last five in Expert mode. Hooray!

The secret (if there is such a thing) was really going on to Expert level before finishing Hard level. Most of the songs are quite achievable once you’re onto the last five songs in Hard, and they do more to help your progress than butting your head against the the Hard ones.

Also, Normal mode songs now seem almost unbelievably simple.

Awesome

Ahh… the pleasure of turning on the computer in the morning and finding *no spam at all*. Akismet + Bad Behaviour really seems to have done the trick. Huzzah.

Back from Canada

Well, it was good work trip at least. The cold had turned into a stuffy nose and a cough by the time I got on the place back home, and the trip home was done in a daze of headache tablets and neck-achingly bad sleep. On the bright side, I got a bulkhead seat all the way home. On the downside, the Air Canada entertainment options were pretty old and primitive on the way back, too: a common screen for everyone, and two movies played in the 17 or so hours of flying.

I got some stuff done anyway - I started work on an SVG game (to get my SVG and JS writing skills back into shape) and I managed a bit of writing.

Also good: I got back early Monday morning, slept until midday, and still managed to get to sleep/wake up at a sensible time. I’m pretty stuffed right now, though, the jetlag is kicking in again.

Updated wordpress

I got really sick of the spam on anotherblog. You don’t see it, but I get about 50 bits of comments spam a day. All mail from a not-previously-accepted commenter, or a commenter who puts a link in the email, gets put in for hand-moderation. I have to trawl through the spam to make sure there isn’t an actual new commenter there, or an old commenter using a different email address.

Recently, I’ve been getting trackback spam, which is even worse: I used to set my posts to allow trackbacks (that’s when another website references one of my posts), and those get automatically added to the list of comments. So some spammers have been using that to get around the hand-moderation. Shits me to tears. I get really irate when spam appears on otherleg, even if only for a few hours before I spot and delete it. So I decided it was time to increase my spam protection.

First step: upgrade wordpress to 2.0.3. This proved pretty easy, happily. Let me know if you have any problems with it - eg. content is especially boring, or you dislike the colour blue. Then, install and run Akismet and Bad Behaviour.

So far, so good.

A Cold

Yep… sore throat, definitely turning into a cold. No surprise, really: several of the WG members have colds, and we’ve been stuck in the same room together for two days, and had dinner together each night. But it feels like it’ll culminate on the plane trip home, hooray. I’m going to buy a face mask, if I can find one.

On the bright side, the fact that I arrive home on Monday morning is slightly mitigated by the fact that it’s a public holiday. Hooray, I missed a long weekend.

Ottawa

We had dinner at “The Black Tomato” last night (just like fried green tomatoes - only a week later!), which was nice. I had an apricot wheat beer, which was pleasant and mild, and smoked salmon. The food arrived so late that despite my earnest desire to sleep as early as humanly possible, we weren’t finished until 11:30pm. Once again, socialising with the working group members is saving me from being weak about jet-lag.

Still, I’m pretty stuffed right now.

Also, I posted a FF I did on the plane.

Jetlag

5:00pm.

Jetlag… kicking… in…
Must… stay… awake…

Bloody hell. What time is in Sydney, anyway?

7:00am.

That’s *exactly* what time it feels like.