I have a silly “security” measure on this blog: I just turn login off if I don’t need to login. Forgot to do that last time (5 days ago). BAAAAAM! 5300 spam comments.
Holy cesspit of depravity, Internet.
Archive for the ‘personal’ Category
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Monday, February 3rd, 2014Sherlock Aga and the Case of the Foul Fragrance
Sunday, November 24th, 2013
Sherlock was seated on the couch, deeply engrossed in her latest experiment. I went to the kitchen, and noticed a rather particular smell. “Do you smell that, Aga?”
“Hmmms what?”
“That smell — not quite a delicate bouquet, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not quite sure,” she said while focusing back on her experiment.
“Perhaps it’s the garbage,” I ventured.
“Uh-huh,” came the non-committing reply.
After disposing of the garbage, I figured that was one case cracked by Dr. Ir. Watson Hugo, and I walked around proud as a peacock. Of course, I should have known better. The next morning, the fragrance persisted and had, if anything, turned fouler. Sherlock noticed it too, but couldn’t be bothered to turn the awesome power of her nose to this particular case. In the mean time, I myself, rather set back by my clear failure, took to round two with heart. Both collections of recyclables, paper and glass, were disposed, and the blue bag for plastic recyclables was condemned to the garage. Furthermore, the sink was thoroughly cleaned. With this, I will admit to a pleased smile – although I was not convinced the malfeasant aroma had been successfully combatted, at least I had significantly reduced the number of safe houses it could turn to.
Returning in the evening, I was greeted by an even more powerful smell. This could no longer be, and I pleaded with Sherlock to make use of her nose for the living quality of our premises. She conceded, and quickly identified the culprit: the smell was coming from the refrigerator. We took some steps to block or lessen the foul odour’s intrusion path, and made up our minds to contact a handyman the next morning (it being Sunday).
The next evening, the handyman was present and together, he and I managed to remove the refrigerator from its enclosure. There was a rather ugly-looking stain in the enclosure, which the handyman identified knowingly as the source of the stench. However, after having cleaned it, the smell still persisted. When Sherlock Aga returned home, she was hit by the smell, and (this time without pleading) enlisted the use of her nose. The culprit was swiftly identified: above the motor of the refrigerator, there was a plastic compartment to contain fluids that leaked from the interior of the fridge there. This compartment housed a foul-looking liquid, which turned out to be the cause of the foul fragrance.
Upon further investigation, Sherlock Aga managed to trace the origins to a pot of pickles. When she had stored the pot lying instead of upright in the fridge, the pot started leaking…
SokoDroid
Thursday, January 10th, 2013
Thanks to Filipe Ferreira, we have tested Soko2012 on an Android system. You can see the result below.
It works!!!
SokoBan 2012 released!
Friday, January 4th, 2013
Arnout de Mooij and I are proud to announce the first official release of SokoBan 2012! This is a classic version of the game Sokoban, completely programmed by Arnout and myself. We started programming this around the time we both just had access to pentiums. Or perhaps even slightly before. Well, it took so long this game can go straight into nostalgia haven!
Quick install
- download and unzip soko2012.zip
Android users: you’ll need an unzip utility. - install DosBox 0.74 or higher
- For Windows only, here’s how to create a shortcut (see also the below picture):
- Go to the Desktop.
- Select the DosBox icon.
- Press Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+V to copy the shortcut.
- Right-click, select “Properties”
- At the end of the field “Target“, add the full path of soko2012.exe.
E.g., if “Target” was "C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" -userconf, and the files were extracted to C:\Users\hugo.jonker\Downloads\sokoban\, then “Target” should become "C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" -userconf C:\Users\hugo.jonker\Downloads\sokoban\soko2012.exe. - Change the field “Start in:” to point to the folder where you extracted the zipfile.
E.g., continuing the previous example, “Start in:” would now become C:\Users\hugo.jonker\Downloads\sokoban\. - Change to the Tab “General” and rename the icon to SokoBox.
To play:
- Unix: run startsoko.sh from the command line.
- Windows: Double-click the SokoBox icon.
Potentially the game runs slow, press Ctrl+F12 a few times to speed up DosBox. - Android: Run DosBox and enter the following commands:
- cd Downloads\sokoban
- soko2012.
Screenshots
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Features
- 48 completely original fields
- 22 completely original, totally not-ripped graphical sets, including:
- a fastfood-themed set
- a halloween-themed one
- a crisis-themed one (bring your money to the bank)
- a Sinterklaas-themed one
- a christmas-themed one (notice that Sinterklaas != Santa)
- a few inspired by videogames of the 8-bit era
- and more!
- a stand-alone level editor
- a stand-alone graphics editor (heavily updated in 2012!)
- Keeping tracks of 2 types of highscores:
- the best efforts (least moves, then quickest) for the first 10 levels
- the 10 players who got the farthest completing all levels
- A player-state saving system, so that you could continue to improve your score for the 2nd type of highscore
- Level selector with thumbnails of the levels
- a demo mode (don’t touch any key for a while in the beginning, and the game will play one of the first 20 levels).
Pointless? FUN! :) - Opening and ending scrolling titles
- Insanely trivial-to-break encryption scheme for said titles :)
- And, lest we forget: CHEATS! Including a complete internal level editor. I kid you not.
System requirements
- A system capable of running DosBox 0.74 or higher
Yeah, that’s sort of it. This game was in development for a while, and unlike Duke Nukem Forever, we never deviated from the original specs. Sure, we need some memory (640K is enough :), CPU (press Ctrl+F12 to speed up, Ctrl+F11 to slow down — these are dosbox controls, not ours), and some graphical requirements (stock VGA modes). Really, your smartphone can handle these. With two fingers in its nose. :)
Development history
Question: what does this version of Sokoban have in common with such pretentious names as Guns n’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, or the game Duke Nukem Forever?
Answer:
- Chinese democracy: in development 1998-2008
- Duke Nukem Forever: in development 1997-2010
- Sokoban by us: in development 1994-2012
Message to take home: all good things deliver. Alternatively: not everyone can maintain their development quality as long as Arnout and I can :)
Thanks
Big thanks due to everyone who helped and inspired us. You’re probably named in the titles already!
Questions/comments
If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me!
If you’re reading this blog, you ought to know how :)
Conference call etiquette
Wednesday, September 5th, 2012Here is a brief tip for conference calls:
Mute Your Mic!
It would be nice if people kept their microphones off till they want to talk — saves a lot of noise and annoyances.
Okay, edge grinded now, back to the call :)
One small step for a man…
Saturday, January 8th, 2011You know, how sometimes something happens to you and you feel like it should be all over the news? I dunno, first kiss, you got your paper accepted when you didn’t think it would, you just made an amazing manoeuver a boat, you just bought your first house, whatever. And somehow, an enormous, exhilarating feeling swells up inside and you just feel good. Damn good, even.
Sometimes, when the feeling is powerful enough, you almost start to wonder: why aren’t other people smiling? Can’t they see how cool the world is now that I tipped it into its place?
Funny thing is, you’re always aware that it isn’t that special: other people kiss for the first time too (although probably slightly different), (different) papers get accepted, people sail, people buy (different) houses, whatever. Yet, somehow, it feels that this one instance is special because it’s you, and this one is unique — all the others are different. Silly huh?
So that’s how I feel right now. Rather high on dopamine, feeling a bit silly about that, on top of which I realise that in the end it’s nothing that doesn’t happen to the rest of the world.
But it feels good!
Too vague: feeling very good for a silly reason — yet still feeling very good :)
Winter Holidays
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011After receiving a comment recently that I don’t update my blog often enough (I don’t, apologies), I figured to try to write a tidbit about the winter holidays. They were great!
Adblocking: not as evil as claimed?
Friday, January 8th, 2010Yesterday, I wanted to watch the next episode of a series I’m following. So I went to my trusty streaming site for this series. However, upon trying to start streaming the episode, I got a page that said “you’re using adblocking software, please don’t, we need the revenue”. Well, fair’s fair, I am using adblocking software, and I don’t begrudge them advertising income. so I turned it off. My mistake.
The episode did start, but halted every 5th second or so, due to laoding problems. That I found out after I had found the episode — it was hiding behind several overlay ads. So, in order to be a decent netizen for this site, I was forced into a state where the site’s actual content was hard to find, and impossible to enjoy.
That’s of course a big bye bye. But it got me thinking. The reason the site needs advertising revenue is, obviously, to pay for bandwidth. By using and adblocking filter, I am not using bandwidth that would be wasted on me. So the effectiveness of their ads increases if I use adblocking software, while the average bandwidth usage per visited page decreases.
That’s even not investigating the advertising revenue model. If it’s based on click-throughs, forcing them on my screen will only annoy me and cost you bandwidth. If it is based on number of views, well, then if I were an advertiser, I’d want some numbers on how number of views corresponds to number of visits to my site or sales. That ratio is going down again if you force it on people using adblocking software.
So there will be a negative effect to forcing visitors to turn off their adblocking software. Nevertheless, I would guess thain the current situation, this is more than offset by the positive effect of more advertisement views. Then again, as an advertiser, I would prefer to spend my money on people that will buy as a result of the ad. That would be the 100% perfect spending of advertisement money (unless you’re trying to establish a name, of course). Makes you wonder if in this Digital Era, perhaps advertisement models will evolve to be more and more precise/finnicky about this.
Curious to hear your thoughts!
Moved!
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Hey all,
I moved! Found myself an awesome place. More space than before, quieter, closer to the station, better connected by bus. What more could you want? Come find me there!
Update Added pictures, and a video. Click to find them :)
Optimist by nature
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009I am having a great week! Running sucked, had cramps for two days. I got rejected by the owner of the house I had set my sights on (and the agency more or less promised me), some luxembourgian idiot rode me off my bike (still in one piece, relax), the housing agent for a new place didn’t have the right key to get us in, and there suddenly are more guys in our dancing class, meaning that we no longer have the luxury of picking girls, there’s an exact match now. On top of that, I lack sleep. Way too much.
Yet, I am happy :) And lucky :) Guess I am just optimistic by nature ;)
(okay okay, there are external influencing factors, but none of them are any of your business, you noisy folk you ;-)