Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts

Friday, 20 January 2012

A message from TPB

With the take down of MegaUpload I thought I was due another post. Below is the latest press release from ThePirateBay. Link to original. And yes I will get round to a post of Tor because it is well worth knowing about.

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.
SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.
In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.
THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

Friday, 30 September 2011

Swarm Robots: Basics

I've started a project for University where we need to program the code for 7 swarm robots. Here's a short video with swarm robots. If you don't really get why this is so awesome, please read on.


The robots need to:
  • select a leader
  • form a group
  • move in a V shape formation like birds migrating
  • while avoiding obsticles
  • and swapping leader to whoever has the highest battery life

The catch is that every robot needs to be programmed with the exact same code. This is known as emergent behaviour. It's pretty damn sweet.

This is my way to think about it. Every single bird is the same. Yet because they have some minor different traits (one might be larger than another), their interactions with each other are different, and so the behaviour of the group may be different to the behaviour if there was only one bird. This is the thought behind emergent behaviour. It is the behaviour that emerges as a group is formed.



[nerd speak]
Now think about the above behaviour in terms of people. If we could model humans and their environment correctly, we could theoritecially simulate the entirety of the human existance. That's a long long way off, but no way near impossible. There is just too many variables to take into account. One of which would be the program itself, and according to Alan Turing with the Halting Problem, the recursive nature of this problem will make the solution undecidable.
[/nerd speak]
Yes that was the nerd speak and not the rest of the post...



Like birds, the robots cannot directly access each others information, they must talk (pass messages). For the robots, the messages can be in the form of a message (one tells the ones listening something) or a service (one asks another for something and it replies accordingly). These are the only ways the robots can interact. Oh but they can ram each other. More on collision detection and avoidance in a later update.



The robots are coded in Python with assistance from ROS (Robot Operating System), that helps with the simulations and the backend on communication between the robots. I'll paste some code at some point to give an overview of what is going on, but I'll be sure to add pictures for those that don't code.

I better end it here, but I have so much more to say so stay tuned for more on swarm robotics.

Cheers,
Milk

Friday, 26 August 2011

Desktop

Short update today. Lots of pictures.
Finally finished my augmented reality project. What a mission that was. Big thanks to my team that wasted the best part of this week working on it.

Rainmeter is awesome. I've had this for a little while now. Makes my desktop look nice yeah. See below.



There are so many different things you can do with this program. Here's another couple of peoples desktops that have been enhanced with Rainmeter.






It's really really easy to set up and it's so so flexible. You simply find a skin you like, download and install. Done.

I'm using:
Encoded for the squares on the top left and the date and time on the top right
DarkEve for the clock on the left
Winamp Circles for the Winamp thingy at the bottom
Sinister for the date down the left
illustro for the boxes on the right (no link because that's included with Rainmeter)

The thing measuring RAM and CPU usage is a Windows gadget (not applicable)

These skins all come with a lot of other little thingys as well so check them out.

You can do some other pretty flash things like use a video as your background, animations on window displays, lots and lots. Check the guy below if you aren't convinced this is awesome.


Link me to yours in the comments. Keen for more ideas to spice mine up.

Cheers,
Milk

Saturday, 6 August 2011

Busy, busy, busy

University:
   Creating an Augmented Reality thing. HARD!
   Tedious assembly language assignment, easy but time consuming.
   Operating Systems assignment, involving threads in C/C++ (eww C).
   Java RMI banking system assignment. Haven't looked at it.

Fun stuff:
   Making a new game!
   Woo!
   Have a like-minded individual that's interested in making a civilisation type game.
   Tried to make this earlier on but got really bored with the data entry...
   Now that I know a bit about networking, it should be a lot more entertaining.
   Details on wether this project is a go ahead or not is to be determined.

This is a very boring update so here is a picture of a cat

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

General Life Update

Hello all,

A general life update seems to be in order. And what better way to do it then with colon separated sections.
Python anyone?

Holidays:
    LAN party:
        Some guy had 8Tb worth of games and movies. Needless to say I have a lot of new games.

    Work:
        So much work. Lots of money for me though.
        #This isn't me, it was the result of Google searching 'dollar dollar bills yo'.


Back at University:
    Marks:
        I got a B+, 2 B's and a B-. Solid B average student.

    This semester:
        Using C and C++, also doing http and web servers, so expect something awesome this semester.
        Maybe a new website?
        Or a multiplayer game?

    Project:
        One of our projects involves creating motion capture technology etc. That will be awesome.


Games:
    #The most important section.
    Starcraft II:
        The ladder is now locked. Waiting on the next season.
        I still suck. Bronze league.
        Watch this video. If you only ever watch one SC2 video, this should be it.

    Fire Emblem - Sacred Stones:
        Friend gave this to me yesterday. It's a GameBoy game.
        SO GOOD!
        Play that shit.
   
    New game:
        Obviously I have left Tanks for too long now.
        Going to make a new game with the help of someone who has the interest.
        #Foo, if you have an idea and the time let me know, comment.
        Looking to maybe do something similar to Fire Emblem, and Final Fantasy Tactics.


Thats about it. Will keep you posted on interesting finding etc. Hopefully I get something useful out of this semester.

Cheers,
Milk

Wednesday, 8 June 2011

Blog Walkers Unite!

Hello again everyone,

Today is a very short entry. You may or may not have noticed I have added a Cbox to my blog. This little thing is quite awesome for finding blogs with similar interests as you.



Basically, all it is, is a message board. Though it allows you to link your blog to the message you leave. I've seen a lot of people leave a message on the Cbox and then click on someone else who has posted on it, then go to their Cbox and repeat.

You can see I have already have two fellow bloggers post on here.
Links of the special people:
http://toksplay.blogspot.com/ - Kal here has some awesome finds. Check it.
http://www.blogobo.com/most-rated/0/1/ - Random person. Yay!

Pretty cool, and very easy to use. Get your own Cbox here.

Also I need to post an update about my new laptop that I mentioned all the way back here. And a picture of my battle station. That should happen tomorrow. On the floor in the lounge...

Cheers,
Milk

Thursday, 21 April 2011

I'm Sick

So guys guess what. I found out I have kidney stones in my right kidney. Spent a few days in and out of hospital over the last few weeks for this. Worst pain I have ever felt in my life. Morphine and all the good stuff was administered. Basically, it is what it sounds like. I have formed rocks in my kidneys. My guess is that it was the 2+ Mothers a day I was drinking.

Mother-energy-drink-Australia.JPG

They are like V / Monster / Red Bull / Demon, (I don't know what other countries have), but they have the maximum legal limit of caffeine and all that good shit. Limit one 500 mL can per day. Felt great. Kept me going well.

Needless to say I had a range side-effects from the green including: chest pains, eye and arm twitching, and greenish coloured urine... I have since stopped having energy drinks...

Here is a picture of some kidney stones.



Not fun. Mine is 6mm, which means it's on the line of too big to pee out, so they are going to blast it with ultrasound to break it up so that I can pee it out. Beautiful. In the meantime they have put a stent in me.



So it has one curly end in my kidney and another curly end in my bladder. This was inserted through 'existing entry points'. That is to say, men, you do not ever want to have to get one of these... Luckily I was under general anaesthesia, or I would have died from fear.



Ultrasound blasting thing is 5th May and then getting the stent removed sometime after that. I'll keep you posted.

It's been 4 days since the stent was inserted and normal bodily function has resumed.

I have a whole bunch of boring university work going on at the moment as well so I'll have to wait until something exciting comes up before I have another decent software related post. Will probably put up one of the personas our group made for one of our projects later on. It looked pretty cool.

Oh and Portal 2 anyone???


Comes out in New Zealand TODAY on Xbox 360. Does anyone know if you can play split-screen local co-op on the Xbox? PLEASE let me know.
Cheers,
Milk

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Long Time No Nothing

Wow long time. So I've been a little busy with the random happenings that is life. All in all nothing exciting or worth mentioning. Uni is a bit of a bore. Little to no software development makes it very boring. And means I have no content for you guys. [Sadface]

miTanks is on hold again while uni is busy. Been playing a lot of age of empires 3 on my downtime. Good game.

Anyway, here are a couple random pictures I've saved onto the work computer.








Will post something tomorrow or the next day about M-Theory, String theory, as I have been watching heaps of videos about it at work. Some interesting concepts there.

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

miTanks, Part 10

It's not working... I've been trying different ways to get the game to draw to screen though I just don't have it working yet. Fixed a couple minor bugs, as I hadn't moved everything across from the PC version.

When running I follow the debug and step through the program. Turns out the game runs perfectly, that is the game constructs and plays out completely with two random computer players, except it never draws to the screen. Thought the onDraw(Canvas canvas) method would be called automatically every couple of milliseconds. Turns out no. So, I need a way to get the canvas (i.e. the screen) so that I can call the method myself. Working on it...

If anyone knows how android views work, let me know...

As for sounds, I have this site that generates old school game noises. So I'll probably use that for my sounds. Means I don't have to search for people to make decent sounds. Lol. Sorry to those of you that did help with that. There just weren't enough to continue with them.

So the site looks like this:



Here is the link. Will probably be my one stop shop for sounds in the future. Check it out.

My roommate made me a little icon for the game as well. His tanks looks better than the little ones I made in the last post. So may end up replacing them with copies of his. I'll post the icon when I have my computer again.

Cheers,
Milk

Saturday, 5 March 2011

miTanks, Part 9

That's right! miTanks is back. After a very very long break I've got motivated to finish it. Or at least get it on the platform it was originally for. Haven't really had much commitment from Foo, which is both our faults really. I'm not the best teacher and he has little / no coding experience. And lobbing him with graphics was not the best move.

Sorry to everyone that doesn't have an Android, but you can still enjoy my struggle with xml and the Android graphics classes... And the PC version will still have the same look and feel as the Android version, with the obvious touch-screen exception.

Can't remember if I've said already or not but this is a fantastic, simple example of how to make a game on Android. The game is open source so I'm basing the majority of figuring out how to do graphics on this. For those of you know don't know software programming is basically: "Learn the basics; google the rest."


Image courtesy of xkcd.

I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do now. The tanks are going to look something like this:
 

And the turrets are just going to be a black smooth edged square, pointing at whatever angle they need to. The ground is either going to be a solid colour or each pixel will be 1 of three colours. This will depend on how much time it takes up to search and utilise a very very large 2D colour array.

I'll be using the sky square (not a box, it's 2D) Foo created earlier, because it is awesome. This will be the background of most of the levels. Might end up overlaying some objects like a building or something.




What else? Damage isn't quite right. The tank only takes damage if the very centre is hit. Not a major flaw but not very ascetically pleasing.

I'll get to work on this all tonight and post something on Monday(?) about what I have done.

Links to the other miTanks posts:
Part 1, The Plan
Part 2, Initial Concept
Part 3, Object Oriented Design + Update
Part 4, Sound Request + Update
Part 5, First Screenshots
Part 6, Ground Types
Part 7, Weapons + Ground Dynamics
Part 8, Initial Release

The last one contains the initial release for PC. Have a look at that if you haven't already. Just renamed all my posts... I had two part 4's AND 2 part 6's. That's just bad...

And as always suggestions are always appreciated.

Cheers,
Milk

Friday, 4 March 2011

Internet Game / General Update

So I've started back at University this week. It's pretty boring so far. Seems that a lot of the code writing stuff is going to happen later on. Which is gay. It means no exciting content for this blog for a wee while.

Also I have recently moved house, which means I can only get online at University, and so haven't been on the blog or anything exciting for a while. Should have internets by next week though.

Supposed to be learning about networking this semester so hopefully, I should have a nice network game to stick on here for you all. That would be awesome.

Something fun:
Has anyone tried to play QWOP? You are Qwop, our small nation's sole representative at the Olympic Games. Ideally you will run 100m but our training program was under-funded. Remember, it's not about whether you win or lose.

Basically you have four buttons, Q, W, O, and P, with which you control the runners thighs and calves to make him run 100m. Sounds easy right? Shit no!

Woo! Straight away instead of running, I decide to do a backflip... Not good. After a decent amount of gameplay my record is 5.5m. Good job Qwop.

Monday, 24 January 2011

It's my birthday soon! Small update and a little bit about myself.

Going to be 20. Woo! That should be fun. Not really doing anything too exciting. Oh! I am going to Fiji for my girlfriends 21st in February. That should be fun too. Unless I die from the heat...

Sorry I haven't done any work on Tanks since the first release. I will get back to it at some point as I actually want it on my phone. Would be nice when going to job interviews. "Well you can see some of the work I have done here." That would be awesome.

I've run out of decent previous projects to put up here too so everything should be new content. Except there is another game I half made, (actually it's at about the same point as the tanks game is now) where you have to get to the door. There are some glitches I haven't fixed and alot of people don't like the unique control system. I'll put some shots and maybe the executable online for that one aswell. It is about as complicated as Tanks so you might not see any code for it. Simply due to the amount of code.

What else? University is starting in the end of February, so expect alot of content about that. Looking for a house, which means I will be poor. But that should be fun. I do like a challenge. Been going for runs, which is always a good thing. But the weather hasn't helped. See this here.

And a picture for my brother:
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]


That's about it.
Cheers,

Tuesday, 11 January 2011

miTanks, Part 7

A little more progress and some more screenshots.

Had a game against my brother yesterday. Found a couple bugs, but it was still playable. The first most obvious bug is that bullets would explode halfway through some walls. This was due to the movement calculations. They were somewhat refined though needed to be more so with the bullets jumping instead of moving through every pixel in their path. Took some thinking but I figured out to solve that.

Also I made the first tank blue and all the others red. A quick fix so I could tell which was the first. Also made it playable for two people. Eventually colours will be selected on start up.


The ground now falls nicely into place if a shot blows up the ground beneath it. Only one line added so this may be a temp fix. Seems to be good for the game needs though. I was too slow with taking the screen shots but the ground falls line by line. Looks ok. Will make it even smoother later on.


Found an issue with falling as well. When you fall it moves you according to gravity. Though you can still move back and forth between the fall movements. If I implement an automatic redraw of the canvas, this shouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately that would ruin how I'm doing my other calculations, so that may have to wait. I'm sure there is another way to resolve this.


Added a laser beam. Fires in a straight line destroying all the ground in it's path. Damn I missed him.


You can kinda see the ground adjustment here. Got a screenshot about halfway through it.


I'm having a meeting with Foo about the game tomorrow. Now that I have alot of the game done, he can get started on creating the game view for Android. Hopefully he has a better idea about how to do this then I do.

By the way, all these screens are from the PC version. Don't worry. I will release it for you all.

Cheers,
Milk

Friday, 7 January 2011

Just an update

Got a booger app on my android. It's sweet as. This phone of so awesome.

Also I've made some good progress porting the tanks game to work on the pc. Have some working very poor graphics. Will upload a pic once I get to my home computer.

There were a lot of problems with the damage calculations. Most of out works now. Still need sounds for the game though.
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