WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

I had a rather restless night last night. I woke up about 3am and got back to sleep some 1-1.5hrs later. I woke a few times with Sienna kicking the bed (she has a small mattress on the floor next to my bed if she gets scared during the night and wants company. I’m trying to wean her off sleeping in the same bed as me). She somehow manages to roll under the bed sometimes and has this mad leg-kicking thing going on while asleep. It’s not all the time, but some nights. I rolled her back onto the mattress a few times and got back to sleep and woke at 9am when the phone rang.

Today we went for a trip on the train into the city. I got paid today so I wanted to pay off one credit card and cancel it. We took the train to Central and walked down to the bank. Unfortunately I forgot where the particular branch was I wanted so we went further down Eagle St to where I knew there was an ATM. Unfortunately again, that ATM was broken so we walked back past the CC bank and found the ATM I originally wanted.

We went back to the bank where my CC had come from and paid off the card and had them destroy it. YAY! Score one for me and my savings! I want to get my cards paid off and save money up for my own home, hopefully by the end of next year.

I rang Foxtel yesterday to see how long I had left on my contract. They told me (after sitting on hold for about 10 minutes) that it runs out in December. I asked them to check again because I was sure I had signed up not long after I moved out near Redbank. I was put on hold for another 10 minutes during which I found the original work order when they installed it.. June 2006. Finally they came back and said “No, it’s definitely December this year”. I said “Uh no, because I have the workorder here and it says June!”. “Oh! I better see who else they have been stuffing around. We don’t want this happening with other customers. Anyway, they had a look and the computer says you were never put on a contract, so if you wish to disconnect you can do it right now without any termination fees!”. SWEET!. “Yes, disconnect it right now please”. “Someone from the couriering agency will phone you tomorrow to confirm a date when they will pick up the Foxtel box”. And they did.. Tomorrow (Wednesday) between 9:30am and 12pm. Bonus!

Yesterday I was searching around yet again for some simple way to create games. I don’t want to spend weeks or months learning a new language and then all the foibles and complex ways to create sprites and sound fx and worrying about memory overflows and crap. I did come across some Python game making libraries.. PyGame and another one whose name escapes me just now.. PyGlet or something I think. Anyway, I also checked Torque, but they all require lots of programming. I just want to create the stuff and link it all together easily. Years ago I paid for the Game-Editor but it never struck me as something I liked working with. Eventually I came across GameMaker. I had seen this in the Game-Editor forums as people trolling or discussing this main competitor, but never really looked into it. I read through the website and saw that it had been worked on for many years and was really well built. In fact, YoYoGames in the UK (iirc) took over support of it from the Professor whom was programming it. They built up the new website, etc and are giving up the LITE version of it for free. It has logos and such but you can put together a game and test it and let others test it really easy. The other thing which caught my eye is there’s a Firefox (and I think, Internet Explorer) plugin to let you launch then play the games directly online without downloading the .exe and installing it. Way cool! I tested a few games which are in beta and really liked the way they were put together, so I downloaded GM7 lite and tested it out. Some time ago when I was looking at programming for the new Google Android platform ( I did write ONE application for it! ) I had designed on paper a game based off rules similar to the Palm game SF-Cave (Wow! It has it’s own website now!). I’m sure you’ve played a variant of it if only in a flash game. It’s really addictive and simple. You only have one keypress which makes the ship/ribbon/whatever go up. If you let go, gravity takes over and you move down. Dodge the walls of the cave and maybe some other things in the cave in order to get the highest score. I had taken this idea and created on paper a similar game but with an alien spaceship flying through the cave, dodging asteroids and collecting stars. Well, I put GM7 to the test. By the end of the day (with interruptions from spending time with my lovely daughter, Sienna) I had created a basic game with some bits of scripting, a static background and random asteroids and stars. I published it on the YoYoGames website as a Beta version of a game and sent it to Chris to try out. It had two midi songs I found on a free midi website and some WAV sound fx I found on various sites. The spaceship graphic I made myself in Paint.Net and found the asteroid and stars on various websites. Today I spent some time upgrading it. I changed the static background for a moving starfield. I made the asteroids appear programmatically instead of randomly and am in the midst of adding a fuelcan to pick up as the fuel goes down, among other ideas I come up with. I also have improved some of the programming. It’s not too bad, actually for a quick first attempt at a game with a system I’ve never used before. It was easy and I just looked up some of the things I wanted on the forum and in the PDF guide. I also got some ideas from demo games included in the main download.

I’m very happy with GameMaker and think I will probably pay for the full version (PRO) which is US$20. I might make some games for kids to play. Sienna was bugging me all yesterday to play the “Alien Cavern” game once she saw the spaceship animating hehe. I told her she’d have to wait a while. Now she played it today but she thinks it’s a bit too hard. Since it will be aimed at kids I might make it a bit easier.

Sienna has already decided the next game for me to make.. one with a Princess who has a pink wand, needs to collect balloons and stars and kill the “naughty things”. I have some ideas but will see how it pans out. I have yet to work out how to draw a Princess animated sprite to use in a game lol!

Here’s the answer to all your movie twists.

I spoil your movie

hehe. Classic! PS: Movie spoilers on that page Wear it on a Tshirt!

Sienna and I are back home again after our trip to see Nonna and Poppy about 650km South.

I was going to go after swimming last Saturday but I couldn’t sleep. I woke at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep so packed the car ready for our trip. After putting it all in and remembering all the stuff to add I hadn’t already packed, having a shower and getting ready then carrying Sienna into the car while mostly asleep we went to the local Post Office to check my mail and came back to pick up Sienna’s spaghetti and off we left. We eventually left around 5am.

By the time it was after lunch we had arrived. My friends Brad and Cassie phoned to meet up. We met them at McDonalds and I had a coffee while Sienna played with a group of kids there for a party. We chatted for a few hours and left to get dinner for us all.

Sunday we drove to Forster for lunch and to do some shopping. It was raining. In fact it rained every day we were there despite poppy saying they’d only had hot sunny days until we arrived. Mum bought me a cappuccino maker machine with some ground coffee beans. Sweet! I always wanted one They also bought Sienna some shoes.

Monday we took poppy out Geocaching. I found one cache but while looking for the other down the bottom of a crappy overgrown track it started raining and Sienna needed to go to the loo, so we headed home.

Tuesday we went to Port Macquarie and did some more shopping. Mostly nonna and poppy shopped while we tagged along.

Wednesday I went to see Brad and Cassie for a few hours to catch up. I do miss seeing my friends and had a nice time chatting and watching TV.

Yesterday while nonna and poppy were busy we went to the shops and bought some things from BIG W. We bought nonna a mood egg which charges on a base and emits colours, slowly changing through the rainbow. She loved it. We could leave it in the hallway at night time and when nonna went to the loo she could see where to go without turning on the bright hallway lights. She wants to get another one. We got a game for poppy’s pc: World Snooker Championship 2004. It was the only game I could find to work on his old pc. We also picked up The Demolition Man dvd for poppy. While looking for the last one Sienna decided to find something for poppy. She skipped into a shop and went right up the back and picked up a set of Pepper and Salt shakers. I told her poppy wouldn’t want them and we looked around until I found the above DVD. Well, last night poppy was looking through a catalogue and said “These pepper and salt shakers are nice. I wish I had them since my shakers are broken”. So, Sienna was right hehe.

Today we drove back home again and only got in about 7:15pm after picking up a couple of things from Coles so we’d have dinner and breakfast. I will go back again tomorrow to shop for the rest of the week. I don’t think I’ll be up too late tonight. So exhausted. Poppy is looking after a friend’s home while they are away and the alarm went off at 3am so he was called by the security place to go check it out. I woke up with the front door opening and closing so got up to see what was happening. I went to check on poppy and came back and we all had a cuppa tea. Not long after I finished and we were all having a chat Sienna woke up and couldn’t find me so started crying. I went back to bed to comfort her but neither of us got to sleep for about 1.5-2hrs and she woke up again at about 6:30am. I didn’t get back to sleep after that so got up at about 8am after lying there for a while. I was tempted to leave driving until tomorrow but don’t want Sienna to miss another swimming lesson plus the fish needed feeding so we came home. I’m to exhausted so think I’ll be going to bed quite soon.

BarVista Espresso Machine

BES200

Specifically designed with useful features for the true coffee fanatics.

Features

• Italian 15 bar pump • Stainless steel Thermoblock heating system • Advanced crema system • Auto Purge System • Pre-brew function • Cup warming plate • Cappuccino froth enhancer • Removable 1.7 litre water tank • Cleaning tool with storage area • Includes stainless steel frothing jug & measuring/tamping spoon

OMG OMG OMG!!!!!#!@*(&^@&*(#^(@*&#!!!eleventyone!

I was just at Oporto for lunch (suct in Chris!) and they now have the chilli sauce in BOTTLES TO BUY!!!!

I think I need a towel..

Only prob is it’s $7.95 per bottle. ACK! Normal sauce bottle size too. Damn!

Today at lunch time in Queen St mall in Brisbane there’s an event featuring Stormtroopers and Boba Fett.

Unfortunately I think they are exactly one month EARLY as Star Wars day isn’t until next month!

It’s getting far too complex and the scripts are timing out and going slow so I may have to move over to another blog. *Sigh*. IE and FireFox keep locking up every time you try to do something.

This happened two days ago and I wish I had known about it but I was down in the Valley doing work. Not THAT kind of work in the Valley

A Flashmob in Queen St Mall.

Oh this new version of WordPress is going to take some getting used to.

I’ve become deeply interested in Boulderdash again. It’s probably my most favourite game ever made in the whole of forever!

I’ve just downloaded a remix :

I’ve always wanted to rewrite Boulderdash for another platform. When the Gameboy Advanced came out I even designed all the graphics ready to go. Then my interest waned. Seems to happen a lot with my hobbies. My Cafepress page has not had updates in quite a while, but there’s another reason for that.

Freakin awesome!!! It’s now my Ringtone That’s gonna annoy people hehe. At least it beats that other crap played by teens on the train.

The last couple of nights I’ve been watching some comedy. Father Ted, Austin Powers and now Jay & Silent Bob Strikes Back.

Hey! As an idea of what to do with your mobile phone camera… When you go to a really big car park and want to remember what level and section you are parked in.. take a leaf from my brainfart: Take a photo of the landmarks provided. When you get back 2 hrs+ later and forget where your car is.. just ask your fone hehe

Hope everyone is doing well. I got a phonecall from my sister last night. I haven’t heard from her in months so we had a long chat. It was really good and I enjoyed it.  I will have to stop being slack and keep in touch dammit.

Hmm. This Wordpress is getting a bit annoying since the Autosave pauses typing for a second or two.. and now the Write Post page comes up slower as it tries to load up all the data. I wonder if there’s a low-fi version of the Write Post page. Oh good, the Image Upload functionality is broken. *Sigh*

Keep smiling and bye for now..

I’ve just received my beta signup account for PMOG. It puts a little toolbar at the bottom of your Firefox screen.

When you visit TLDs (Top level domains. eg BangRocks.com and not Bangrocks.com/12/08/blogpost) you get points. You can use these points to buy weapons or crates or armour, etc.  When you visit a website and drop off a mine, the next PMOG person may sustain damage to their character unless they have their armour enabled.

Another thing is you can create missions. An example mission is where you introduce people to websites you enjoy visiting. PMOG overlays a small HTML box in the bottom right corner of the screen with information about that website.  It seems like this is a lot of fun, but you don’t have to actively participate. Just surf the web and things happen.  That kind of game appeals to me more than a twitch-based FPS.  Check it out!

After listening to Leo Laporte talking about washing keyboards in dishwashers I decided to test out my old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro.  I let it dry overnight and tested it the next day, but pressing one key would display several characters along with the one I wanted.  I was disappointed, but had wanted a new keyboard anyway due to the dirt and stuff all over the old one.  I bought my new Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and plugged it in. After some time using it I eventually got used to it.  Lisa tested it while she was here recently and loves it more than my old Pro keyboard.

Well, Sienna’s keyboard had stopped working due to her tripping over the cable some weeks ago.  It worked in bits and pieces for a while but eventually stopped working unless I held it at just the right angle in the socket, bit my tongue and tilted my head 31.4159265358979323846264338327950288 degrees to the left.  I gave up on it and advised her we would have to get another.  I waited for the last couple of weeks for Freecycle to have one available but no such dice.

I have been listening to Leo again talking to people about washing keyboards. He said he had similar issues with his keyboard when testing after only about 4 days so he left it for about two weeks.  He then tested it again and Lo and Behold it worked fine.  I thought ‘What have I got to lose?’ and plugged my old Pro keyboard into Sienna’s PC.  I set up the BIOS settings (the battery has died) and logged into Mepis fine.  I launched the text editor “Kate” and tested every key I could. THEY ALL WORK PERFECTLY!  YEEEHHAAAA!!!! How sweet is that? The keyboard actually survived!!

All in all, had I had the time I could have waited and tested again but it would have left me without a usable computer for a couple of weeks.  I can’t last that long. I have my CafePress shop to keep updated as often as possible and I chat to Catherine most nights of the week.  The only downside to my new keyboard is it has no USB ports and no internal hub.  The old one does.  I may have to end up purchasing a cheap USB hub as I have so many devices now to install and have to keep crawling under the table to insert and remove different devices.  I do actually have two extra USB 1.1 ports due to other USB PCI cards and extenders inside the PC but when I plug things into the ports they come up as unrecognised devices.  I do have two devices currently plugged into other ports and they seem to work fine.  I have four USB 1.1 ports, one used in each two-port-set. My mouse is detected and works fine in one of the USB 1.1 ports and my keyboard is in another.  I understand they would be SLOWER than USB 2.0 ports but why would devices not be recognised at all plugged into the USB 1.1 ports? Oh well. No matter.

Hey They named a robot after me

Wall-E final trailer

Reminds me somewhat of Number 5 from Short Circuit meets the magnificent 1-X robot from Futurama hehe. Could be a good movie.

37 years old. No wonder I’m tired all the time

Yesterday morning I picked up Sienna from Bec’s and took her to school. We got her Easter Hat and put it on then I headed out to the quadrangle area and waited with the other relatives. We all had our cameras at the ready. The kids all came out with their Easter Hats on and we took photos like mad. I even filmed some of it with the kids singing easter songs. If I cbf I might upload the movie for you to watch.

Once the main event was completed we went back to the classroom and played some games. The kids sang us songs such as Little Peter Rabbit and It’s a small world. We then played the Hokey Pokey and went outside for an Egg-and-Spoon race. It started sprinkling while we were doing that so we all came back inside again to eat chocolate crackles, popcorn, hot cross buns, lamingtons, etc.

Next we went to the playground where the teachers had ‘hidden’ cutout eggs with the kids’ names on them. They had to find two of each and when they did, take the eggs to the teacher to trade in for real mini easter eggs. Unfortunately in the meantime other kids had come out to play in the playground and had collected the eggs so the teacher had to hide them again while the little ones covered their eyes. This was actually the third time she had had to do that hehe. I helped Sienna find hers and another girl to find hers since she was concerned at not finding them. We then checked out and came home for a rest.

I went to my regular doctor at a shopping centre where I used to live before I moved to my current home. We got there 15 mins late due to traffic. Everyone decided it was POETS day. Even though technically it was Thursday, but POETF day doesn’t really work. I phoned them to let them know I was going to be late. Once I got there I explained to the Dr I had been sick and coughing up yellow phlegm so started taking some LPV 500 penicillin antibiotics which cleared it up over a few days. He said this was the best thing to do. I’d had a virus which caused wheezing and an allergic reaction. This became Bronchitis and the LPV 500 helped fix that up but I still had the allergy which had become a type of asthma. All I had to do now was get a nasal spray to stop the dripping down the back of my throat and that’d help stop the coughing. He said I should keep taking the antibiotics, but instead of taking them without food I should always take ALL antibiotics WITH food (there’s only one type you don’t have with food). I told him the only drawback with these antibiotics is my stomach churning and a bit of nausea. He said this is because I was following the directions on the box and eating without food. The antibiotics were causing irritation to my stomach and it was eating into the lining. He also said not to worry about alcohol as it’s a myth that antibiotics and alcohol are bad. I’d heard the same thing so didn’t worry about having some wine at Catherine’s Wednesday night while there.

From there we went into the shopping centre. I wanted to get some cheap shoes for Sienna as the new sandals Bec had bought her were scraping the skin off the back of her heels. We went inside and past the cinemas and I saw the kids Dr Seuss movie “Horton hears a Who” had started. I asked them if we’d missed anything and they said it was going to start in about 5 minutes so we had plenty of time. We got our tickets and some popcorn and lemonade and went into cinema 6. We were the first ones there and sat for half an hour with nothing on the screen. A few other people turned up so I thought maybe they weren’t starting until enough people got there. After 10 mins of previews which didn’t seem related to kids shows the movie started. Oh dear! It wasn’t Horton hears a Who at all. It was an action movie or something. We walked out and I saw we had accidentally entered Cinema 8 which was right next to 6. We went to the booth and traded in our tickets for other ones which were for the same show starting in another 15 minutes. We got some more popcorn and a couple of chocolate ice creams and went into the cinema. This time I made sure we were in the right one and other kids turned up. All in all there was about 7 people in the cinema this time. The movie came on and we watched it. It’s the best adaptation of a Dr Seuss movie I have seen. They’ve kept to the style of Dr Seuss very well. I quite enjoyed the show and I think Sienna did too.

We went to get some shoes for Sienna. I didn’t want to spend too much so we went to Crazy Clarks and found a pair of thongs for $2.99. We went to the checkout but there wasn’t a barcode on them so the guy said “I’ll just scan this Kinder Surprise egg and whatever it comes up as I will charge you”. It came up as $1.70! Suweeet! I put the shoes on Sienna and we practically ran to the bottom level down a couple of travelators because the Cadbury’s Easter Bunny show was starting. We watched the show and the kids were given mini Easter Eggs. We went shopping in Coles to get some groceries and on the way out the checkout the girl gave Sienna a mini Easter Egg. Sienna put the egg on the conveyor belt. I told her she didn’t have to do that but Sienna said “She has to scan it first!”. I told the checkout girl and she laughed and said it was free so Sienna could have it. She’s too clever for her own good! Sienna that is… not the checkout girl.. although she could be clever too.. I don’t really know.

We drove home and Sienna had something to eat then I got her off to bed.

Today I’ve been reading my birthday greetings on Facebook and the auto-generated ones from various forums I’ve joined over the year. Oh the sincerity hehe