Life, music, games and computers.
Life
Ludum Dare 21
55 months ago
This weekend I entered the Ludum Dare 48 hour game design competition. Technically there are still several hours of development time left to go, but I’m not sure how much more I’ll actually get done.
The theme for the competition was Escape – which I initially wasn’t happy with, having voted for Adaptation, Genetics, and Immortality – but after a few hours of brainstorming I eventually came up with what I thought was a reasonably simple (and possibly fun) game idea; a sliding block puzzle, where you have to reach the exit without being caught by the enemies chasing you.
By the end of Friday, I had all the sprite-work done, a player that could move around the screen and some basic level collision stuff. Saturday was much more productive, and by mid-afternoon I had most of the game mechanics finished. Saturday evening was divided between making music/sound effects, making title and instruction screens and trying to come up with more levels.
After posting the first version of this blog entry, I eventually decided that there was still plenty of time to improve things and dived back into the code. On Sunday I made the animation smoother (originally characters moved an entire square with each step; a quick hack changed this to a fluid motion over several frames), added some slightly better music and re-designed all of the levels to be more fun.
…here it is:
This is my first Ludum Dare, but my second or third independent entry into a 48 hour competition. I’m slowly gaining more confidence with my ideas and am happy to see I’m getting much faster at developing prototypes — but there’s still a long way to go.
Here’s a list of things I’ve learnt from this competition:
- I am capable of coming up with simple ideas.
- My sprite-work doesn’t completely suck — some people have said they think the characters are cute. ^_^
- I suck at composing music and/or using LMMS/Musagi. I definitely need to practice this.
- Running all the way across the screen to reach a puzzle is not fun, and neither is a puzzle so dependent on perfect timing that it frustrates people.
If anybody has any feedback on GaolBreak, please leave a comment.
Winchester Mystery House
15 months ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
The Winchester Mystery House is a pretty weird house in San José.
It was owned by Sarah Winchester, who married into the Winchester rifle company. She was told by a psychic that the deaths of her husband and daughter were caused by spirits, and that the only way to escape them was to buy an unfinished building and continue working on it until the day that she died. She was also four foot eleven and had arthritis.
The result is a bit of an architectural oddity. There are doors that lead nowhere (except to eight foot drops); windows in the middle of floors; stairways where the steps are an inch high at most; and doors which are either tiny or open onto brick walls.
Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to take photos inside the house, but I’ve tried my best to capture how weird it looks from the outside.
Picasa Album - Winchester Mystery House
Big Basin Redwoods State Park
07 months ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
So, my plan to regularly blog about interesting things I was doing in Santa Clara didn’t really work out — mainly because I haven’t really spent very much time doing interesting things. ”This weekend I did some work” doesn’t really make for a very good blog post.
But today, I did do something interesting. Me, a fellow intern from Intel, his girlfriend and a couple of guys from Google went hiking at the Big Basin Redwoods State Park, in the Santa Cruz mountains.
We were probably out there for about six hours or so, and I think we probably walked about 10 miles. I’ve tried to look up the route exactly, but the Big Basin website is pretty suck.
I also took photos. 
Picasa Album - Big Basin Redwoods State Park
Santa Clara
38 months ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
So, as hopefully some of you will know, I am set to be living and working in Santa Clara, California for the next three months. I figured this gives me a pretty good excuse to blog; I can post some pretty pictures, rant about frustrating travel experiences and keep everybody back home up to date.
The Trip
Getting here was definitely one of the longest trips I’ve ever taken. At 3:00 (GMT), I was picked up by a colleague and taxi’d to Warwick Parkway Rail Station. From there, I got a coach to London Heathrow, where I found out that my first flight had been delayed (the aircraft had, apparently, “not turned up yet”). So I sat for about eight hours — flicked through a few books, played a few games, grabbed a coffee from Pret, etc.
Eventually, I was allowed to board the plane. The following 11 hours were incredibly dull; I was sitting in between two other people (who I didn’t really fancy talking to) and had promised myself that I would not sleep unless it was appropriate to do so in PST. The reason I’ve been up since 5:00 (and the reason I’m writing this post at 6:00) is that I failed in this, accidentally falling asleep in between watching RED and WALL-E (both of which, incidentally, were quite enjoyable).
A quite good book.
You might be wondering why a book’s front cover has just appeared in the middle of my post. It’s because my girlfriend gave me a surprise gift before I left: Inflight Science, by Brian Clegg. And I’m glad she did so, because it was really quite good.
Inflight Science basically explains (in simple terms) some of the science that one is likely to encounter whilst travelling by air. Here are some examples of the things I learnt about: how the X-Ray scanners in terminals work; why Einstein’s theory of relativity needs to be accounted for when using GPS; how different clouds form; and what would happen if a plane were to be struck by lightning.
My only real problem with the book was that it expected me to be flicking through it much quicker than I was — almost as though it would have preferred I was: i) not paying much attention and ii) on a really short flight. By the time I reached the chapter starting “by now you are probably being taxi’d onto the runway” I had already been in the air for about 20 minutes or so — and I missed my chance to check out some of the ground science. I also wish I had had a window seat and been surrounded by friends/family (so I could have tried out some of its inflight experiments without looking like a dick), but this is hardly the book’s fault.
I landed, cleared customs, sat around for a few hours playing Professor Layton and then got my final flight to San Jose. By the time I was all checked in to my studio apartment it was 19:00 PST (03:00 GMT), bringing me up to a nice 24 hours of travel.
My Studio Apartment
My studio apartment seems nice enough, but I haven’t really experienced it enough to comment upon it just yet.
There are a few small problems (the door is fiddly, the air conditioning is loud, it’s pretty expensive) but it’s going to have to do for the time being.
Picasa Album - Santa Clara
Today
My plan for today is pretty boring. I’m going to try and sort out data on my phone (only checking my e-mail in the evenings for 3 months would drive me mental); I need to buy some groceries (so that I can have breakfast, eat etc); and I need to try and get a feel for the area around my apartment. I’m hoping that the bus system is pretty straightforward — and wishing that I could drive.
Why I Hate the #debill
01 year ago
Well, the ayes have it, the ayes have it; the Digital Economy Bill looks set to become the Digital Economy Act. A bad day for all users of the internet throughout the UK.
My upset has nothing to do with my support for legalised filesharing — though I do believe that copyright is in dire need of reform and that filesharing creates rather than destroys markets, that’s an issue to be covered another day in a different blog post.
I am more concerned with the fact that the measures outlined in the bill will not work. Thanks to anonymity networks like Tor, illegal filesharing through otherwise legal technologies (such as BitTorrent and YouTube), the “dynamic” IP addresses in use by most ISPs and an inability to adequately protect ones own wireless connection from serious attacks, we’ve been placed at the top of a slippery slope.
All that this bill will accomplish is pushing illegal filesharing further underground, forcing it to invent new untrackable technologies and/or abuse existing old ones. It is only a matter of time before the big “creative industries” realise that their sales have not gone up and that their profits have not increased. It is only a matter of time before they claim that nobody purchased Lily Allen’s new album because of people trading files via e-mail, posting DVDs and USB sticks to one another via smail mail, and recording their own MP3s from low-quality media streams. The suggestion that people don’t want to buy crap music they can hear for free every day on the radio is apparently too radical.
The answer to these problems? More legislation pushed through by people who do not understand the internet and less freedom for its users.
I’m also very uncomfortable with the way that copyright infringement through non-filesharing means are not mentioned (or, if they are, I’ve yet to hear about it). Where is the crackdown on the lending of books and CDs? Where is the legislation that says it is illegal to create copies of television shows you have watched and distribute them to your friends? Presumably the bill would not have passed, had the elderly been aware they’d have their VHS players confiscated.
Excuse me, whilst I write another letter to my MP.
Assassin’s Creed II: Box and First Impressions
02 years ago
So pretty...
Yesterday I was lucky enough to come home and find this beautiful Assassin’s Creed II “Black Edition” boxset, complete with an Ezio figurine.
It was so pretty I had to take a picture of it.
The little leather-bound book contains concept art and a few comments from developers, and the Bonus DVD has some wallpapers and stuff like that on it. All in all, it’s awesome.
Anybody that hasn’t yet bought Assassin’s Creed II but is contemplating it should bite the bullet already. I’ll be putting up a full review when I finish it, but if the first few hours are anything to go by, then it’s well worth the money.
Starting a PhD
12 years ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
As I may have alluded to in previous posts, I have recently started a PhD in the High Performance Systems group at the University of Warwick. When I say recent, I mean it; at the time of writing, I’m only four weeks in.
My life has taken a turn for the busy — though there’s no “strict rules” regarding how much time I should work, or when I should work, I’ve found myself working 9 till 5 (what a way to make a living!) and spending my weekends playing on the Xbox.
Despite this, you can expect my updates to become slightly more frequent… I’ve been told that, since I’m going into research, I should have more web presence; I can’t think of a better way than to dust off my unused domain names and get a proper site out there.
GPG Nightmare
03 years ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
Well, it’s pretty embarrassing; I forgot my GPG passphrase. Luckily I had the forethought to generate a revocation certificate when I created the private key, but it doesn’t make me feel any less foolish.
It took me a few days to pluck up the courage to publish my revocation certificate, which is ridiculous — I was worried that people would see two revocations in two years and assume I was an idiot. My housemates have already assured me I have nothing to worry about, since my idiocy is well-known…
Felt I should blog about it since I haven’t been keeping my promise (to whom exactly I’m not sure) of an increased blogging frequency.
New key ID is BD9CC8A3; if anybody who had previously signed my ID would like to meet up, exchange photo ID and the usual malarkey then please let me know!
Tim Minchin!
03 years ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
As I may have mentioned in my last blog post (I forget), I went to see Tim Minchin with my girlfriend and the rest of my house on Sunday. He was AWESOME. Certainly awesome enough to deserve capital letters, anyway.
Not to mention, he signed my canvas bag:
If you’ve never heard of him before, I recommend you check him out on YouTube. He’s been hailed by both me and the Times as “the new Bill Bailey” — when somebody has such great reviews from such refutable sources you know he’s good.
I’m Back!
13 years ago
by John Pennycook
in Life
I don’t suspect that anybody actually ever reads this blog, but if there’s anybody who does and somehow doesn’t know me personally then they probably deserve to know where I’ve been since July.
Basically, over the summer I started to lose some of the feeling in my right hand. I feared the worst initially — the dreaded carpal tunnel — but it soon turned out that it was something a little more manageable. Years of bad posture had lead to a couple of trapped nerves in my neck.
Things are all fine and dandy now thanks to a course of physiotherapy, regular exercise and that sort of thing, but whilst it was going on I was ordered to take a break from my computer and am only now getting back into the swing of things.
I’m back into moderating and playing games, and have recently started to develop my third year project, so expect updates galore!
