i just read an article describing the difficulties in attempting to label our nuclear waste sites in a way that will stand the test of time. i have to admit, they were very creative when coming up with their scenarios for failure: “feminist corporations that disbelieve WIPP warnings because they were written by men”, and “in the year 11991, robotic slaves are infected with a computer virus that compels them to override their safety programming as they compulsively drill and construct mine shafts” are my personal favorites.

i have to admit, the site that they outline in the article would be most impressive to behold. too bad you’re supposed to stay away. its a strange balance to try to warn people to stay away… a massive structure would obviously *attract* attention, but you have to come closer in order to decipher that the inscriptions mean “keep out”.

it makes me wonder, could the arc of the covenant — as depicted in raiders of the lost arc, with all its flesh boiling might — simply be a container for concentrated hazardous waste from an ancient / alien civilization? maybe those statues of winged creatures pointing to each other was supposed to mean something really terrible. its an interesting way to look at ancient curses & other lore. maybe we should just straight-up curse the wipp dump… but then i guess we’ll get people like indiana jones going in and opening stuff up just cuz they don’t believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus pocus.

the period before the singularity / introdus / collective-consciousness. the time before whatever comes next…

that is why i stand ʎɯ ǝʇsɐdɥʇooʇ

if you’ve ever tried to “roll” a d4, you may have noticed that tetrahedrons don’t. besides, who doesnt like spinning their dice?

i foresee an entire new genre of roleplaying games… and i like it.

the day has finally arrived. i had hoped we might have been able to avoid it altogether, but bill-c61 is here. the initial analysis by the internet’s favourite canadian copyright lawyer michael geist indicate that the bill even worse than than our neighbours-to-the-south’s infamous dmca.

but it is not yet too late! this bill can still die on the table if canadians can convince their members of parliament that amendments such as these would throw us 10 years backwards and lock us there tighter than prentice’s beloved drm. i if you havn’t yet, i urge you to do so. if you have… feel free to do it again!

i’m all for rewarding canadian innovation and talent in every domain… but that is not the goal of locking up digital media. these tactics are for the sole purpose of keeping the power in the hands of industry majors still running on dinosaur business models that i can’t wait to see go extinct.

i demand public consultation before we do something we cannot take back. i demand a balanced system - or one in favour of our citizens (creators of art and art’s consumers are all canadian citizens, corporations - be they american or canadian - are not). if my demands are not met… well… maybe i’ll just move to new zealand. they probably have faster internet there anyway. next up: net neutrality.

(my first letter to prentice, verner, dewar and harper)

an observation of commuting on the ttc and leaving the subway via the escalator at king station during rushhour:

the hordes of shuffling people funneling into the escalator reminds me of a zipper. a very strange zipper that takes a jumbled mess and forces it into a two columned interlocking pattern (as opposed to the usual input of two descrete columns).

another thing i noticed is that since its so crowded and noone can make a full stride, people walk by shifting their weight from one foot to another and pivoting. it creates this neat reverse-pendulum effect with their upper bodies that mimics exactly how the mondoshawans walk.

it’s also fun to pretend all these shuffling people are zombies: you have to zombie-walk along with them in order to avoid detection followed by an inevitable de-braining.

i’ve come across one of the best sentences ever while reading gödel escher bach: and eternal golden braid (aka geb):

“yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation” yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

this operation of preceding a phrase with it’s quotation was invented by willard van orman quine and is hence called “to quine a phrase” to quine a phrase

quine also refers to a category of computer programs which output their own source code. here is an example in c by thad smith

#include<stdio.h>
main(){char*c="\\\"#include<stdio.h>%cmain(){char*c=%c%c%c%.102s%cn%c
;printf(c+2,c[102],c[1],*c,*c,c,*c,c[1]);exit(0);}\n";printf(c+2,c[10
2],c[1],*c,*c,c,*c,c[1]);exit(0);}

and another in lisp by john mccarthy(creator of the language) and carolyn talcott

((lambda (x)
   (list x (list (quote quote) x)))
  (quote
     (lambda (x)
       (list x (list (quote quote) x)))))

parentheses are elegant weapons for a more… civilized age

seriously tho, geb is amazing. after a brief intermission, i’ve delved into part two which has kicked it up a notch and begun theorising about the mind and the essence of consciousness. now this is what i signed up for!

makes me swoon with recursive joy

amos and i started playing mechwarrior 3050 a while back, and after hearing the news of a crysis total conversion mechwarrior mod we figured the time was right to complete this 95 snes title. the co-op mode for this game is kind of strange… one player (amos) controls the legs of your mech while the other (myself) controls the guns, each rotating independently. an interesting game dynamic, but i digress. we loaded it up tonight to finally play through the last (fifth) level, and unfortunately find ourselves caught between a thunderbolt mech and a dead-end canyon. needless to say, the level leading up to this last guy is really long and our savestate has little health and no 1ups. what are a couple of battlemech pilots to do?

we came to the consensus that cheating in order to beat this final “enemy mech” falls within our ethical boundaries as gamers, but alas! the built-in password-based code system is only available at the start screen, and we can’t find a game genie code that works!

here is where i pays off to be a total nerd. the thing about emulators is that you can read/write anything in the game’s memory (this is how game genies work, only they do it using hardware - a different kind of cool). since i’ve previously taught myself a bit of rom hacking back when i was playing dragon warrior monsters (pokèmon + breeding. good times), i decided to make us an invincibility code.

the process is actually almost simple. you search through the game’s ram (using the tools build into the emulator) for the values of the variables you’re looking to edit, resume the game so that the values are updated (or not), and search again to reduce the number of matches. lather, rinse, repeat. once you know the memory address of your desired variable, append the 2-digit hex value you want to set it to to get a pro action replay code (similar to game genie). booya.

(note: you can hack in-game constants too, but they’re harder to find. search the game’s rom for sets of related values that would appear sequentially. eg: rpg player initial stats etc)

so, for anyone who thinks mechwarrior 3050 is too hard, here’s the invincibility code:

7E2ABE00

and if you don’t like the look of that dissipating yellow overheat meter, kill it with this:

7E2ACC00

while we’re at it, set your ammo so you never run dry with these bad boys:

7E2AE402
7E2AE602
7E2AE802

for the record tho, the ending to this game is very disappointing. boo activision, boooooo.

this post is brought to you by: pocari sweat - ion supply drink. pocari sweat is to gatorade as sake is to wine. mm-mmmm sweat

i have to say that two firefox plugins that i couldn’t imagine working without are my del.icio.us buttons and the session manager. for the uninitiated, del.icio.us is a web2.0 bookmarking tool. your bookmarks are available from anywhere on the internet; you can share them with anyone, and see what other people are saving. the buttons are what make this webapp usable to me, as without browser integration… its a bust. session manager lets you save all your open windows and tabs for resuming your browsing sesh later on.

so… what about a web2.0 (or perhaps available-online but not publicly shared) browser session manager? so i can transition from using the internet at work to at home effortlessly. if such a tool exists, please let me know. if not, feel free to make one.

someone needs to port scummvm (script creation utility for maniac mansion) to the ipod touch. think about it… your on the subway/bus/car/plane/sidewalk having a wicked awesome time playing classics like sam & max hit the road, day of the tentacle, full throttle, the dig (and yes, the list of great scumm games goes on and on). lucas arts games were absolutely *amazing* back then and the touch-screen interface is absolutely *perfect* for point-and-click adventures.

speaking of which… myst. need i say more?

i was excited when i thought about making a controller to play nes games on my ipod… but this seems to have a much better effort-vs-reward equation to it. especially when someone else puts in all the effort and i reap the rewards…

update: wow, sometimes i’m just silly. thanks google…

and for the boss: sam & max on the ds

also, myst ds is going to be an actual commercial release. my 2 minutes of googling did not come up with any myst on the ipod touch tho. there is still time!now i need to go buy one of these hardware platforms… but what about my eeepc?! there is just too much cool stuff.