prog | Entries tagged with toys

I am totally in-line for a new iPhone when Apple lifts the expected veil on the device's second generation next month. My little Sony Ericsson brick is four years old, covered in interfaces that nobody supports any more, and works so spottily that I've been asking clients who wish to have a voice meeting if we could use Skype instead. I tell them that I'm holding out for the new iPhones, rather than just picking up a replacement. They understand.

Hm... I actually told myself (and anyone in earshot) from the start that I'd be in as soon as it hit its first major revision, so in that way I'm kind of pleased with myself for holding out so long.

My Star Wars memory:

I was too little to be aware of the first Star Wars film when it was released, but I nonetheless had contemporary exposure to it when my mom brought some a couple of Kenner dolls, a Sand Person and some other guy. My guess is she went to the toy store to get me a treat, and the clerk showed her these as the new hotness.

Anyway, I had never owned "action figures" before, so my mom demonstrated how I might play with them. She took them out of their blister packs, left their tiny plastic weapons aside, raised their arms and had them embrace. "See? You can make them hug."

The first movie in the series that I actually saw was Empire, but I knew all about Star Wars by cultural osmosis by then, just from one or two years of grade school. When the movie was over, I didn't want it to end, and I cried and cried. I asked my brother Peter how many more they would make. "I don't know. Six?" he said. I cried more.

This looks like it might be worth my while to come to and bring some Jmac's Arcades. Anyone wanna come with? I feel antsy that I haven't made any in three months, even though I have the inspiration for the next one; the other pillars just win out in the continual fight over motivation. So this might give it a little boost.

Speaking of the automated dorkiness implied by the subject line,

xach strikes again with another wigflip toy, this one letting you make your own "lolcats"-style images without Photoshop. I started to show my appreciation by taking pictures he's posted of himself and his little son and putting I CAN HAS JUICEBOX or something on it but it didn't feel right, so I'll just talk about it here instead la bla.

Oh, and since it came up in conversation today: you have probably already seen loltrek, which I was amused to discover was by Stephen Grenade and some of the other interactive-fiction people I vaguely know. Good job, guys.

My parents finally picked up a Globe to check real estate prices 'round here. They didn't believe the numbers I have recited to them, until now. But then this led into another long lecture (in the academic sense) about home-buying strategies, so I know it didn't really discourage them from their dream of seeing their youngest become a homeowner; owning property is the one true form of financial security, to them.

I'm still not convinced of why I'd want to own a home versus renting one. However, I suspect that I just haven't collected enough reasons yet. I still feel that it's pretty likely that Linden's the last apartment I'm going to rent, before entering the real estate market on my own. I feel that it's equally likely I'll live here for more than a year. Perhaps I'll break the two-year record I set with my W-ville place! But, yes... we'll see.

Volity news:

Volity isn't behind schedule, but I feel like it should be. I guess I'm just impatient. Some of this also comes from the fact I'm repeating myself in mail to people, including curious strangers who've been joining the mailing list. I've had to write two separate emails about how the graphics're going to work, to two people who independently asked the same question. The question was perfectly reasonable, emerging from the currently published doucmentation describing the graphics system in general but not in detail. This makes it clear to me which book chapter I ought to write next, which is great, but on the other hand I'm hesitant to write anything definitively until we actually have a client, and can prove (to ourselves as much as anyone else) that these ideas will actually work.

That's actually what I'm impatient about. Clients we have so far include a very basic command-line thing that

daerr wrote, and the Java client that K has recently started building. The latter is going to be the big deal, but it's a month or three away from usability. What to do in the meantime? I predict that I'll spontaneously sink some hours into mutating d's client to use the Jabber libraries I wrote, and then extending it from there to handle all the functionality I'm adding into the server code. Either that or talk d into doing it. We'll talk.

Random thought (spurred by the music the diesel is playing right now, dunno why): One of the Karate Kid movies (II? III?) had the title character visiting Japan, and the TV trailer depicted him awkwardly asking a local girl "Are you... arranged, like?" (Referring to arranged marriage.) My dad, when we watched this ad (long, long ago, mind you) thought he said "Are you arranged right?" and exclaimed about what a crude movie this no doubt was.

I'm pretty sure I saw Karate Kid II, but I don't remember anything about it other than the Bad Karate Man (he wore a black gi, boo hiss) and a scene of KK and his coach on the long flight to Okinawa (IIRC). The fact that they were flying wasn't as important as the fact that they were traveling, and the focus of their scene was conversation about their destination. I think I remembered that scene because it seemed inspiring to me, who was (and remains) jittery on cross-country airplane flights, and here were these guys not even thinking about an intercontinental flight.

That Christmas I got an action figure of the BKM, who didn't have kung-fu grip per se, but did have a button on his back or hip or somewhere that made him kick, and came with little plastic oil barrels or something for him to kick over. The other figures based on the movie all did different things, chop and punch and so on, but I didn't have any of those. However, the BKM was like twice the height of my Star Wars guys, and so made for an effective exotic villain in young jmac's chop-socky playhouse of the mind.

Has anyone ever created a piece of media titled The Kung-Fu Grippe? I'd check now but I'm not online. It could be about any number of things, anyway.

Crap. I just asked the girl "C'n I have half a refill of the dark?", but it came out as "have have a refill"... I'm speaking in thinkos... and now I have a second large coffee here, which is too much. If I drink it all I can't let myself have any coffee until I finish peeing all this out, which won't be until 6 p.m. or so, or I will turn into Mr. Coffee Nerves and ineffectively fly around the office with my little jet pack and ruin marriages until it's time to go home.

True fact: I'm less shy about the word "girl" than I have been, perhaps as recently as a year ago. UMaine isn't the most oppressively P.C. place on earth but it does encourage what I imagine is the standard battery of Right Thinking through Word Elimination that one sees in American universities. There, "girl" is never ever the right word, unless one is talking about an actual young child. It took years of soaking in the Real World to get a feeling for the contexts when the word is just fine -- even stylistically appropriate -- to apply to an adult female-type person, and the contexts when it is legitimately too squirmy for the 21st century. (Which are many, granted.)

I'm probably like this with a bunch of words, actually.

Of course, this assumes a rational audience. A friend once told the story that someone crossed out the phrase "The home of Boston's chic shops" from an ad poster in the T, and wrote "WE'RE CALLED WOMEN" over it.

Also, it's old news, but still: did I call it, or what? I was guessing that his downfall would have been a misstatement, not a sound effect. But, whatever. Doom doom doom. I will do what I can.

I rediscovered last night at Matt's house that, yea verily, it is a fine thing to have video games. He and I agreed that among the best things about adulthood is never again having to gnash one's teeth at the phrase "Christmas is coming, you know." You want a cool toy? It's yours!

Well, unless you don't have a steady income. Hrrn. The thought of a fat advance check loses its luster when you realize that you used to make that much in two weeks of salary. But: I wait. Interesting things are afoot, always always.

My best characters at Super Smash Brothers are Mario and Jigglypuff.

Meanwhile, in the other game I played yesterday, Bahboteph has decided that he must save the world by learning the lost occult Nazi filmmaking techniques, so that he can make a music video. Or something. The sleeper awakens the world.

Current Music: Breed - Snake River Conspiracy - Sonic Jihad

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A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

That's awful high, Jason. That's awful high.

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