Nightly Open Thread
Has the Higgs boson been discovered?
An internally leaked memo briefly teased the possibility that the elusive “God particle” had been observed in the Large Hadron Collider. Sadly, this is probably not actually the case.
On an unrelated note, my home city amuses me greatly sometimes.
Earth Day was a major flop in Edmonton this year, and not just because the major event to “celebrate” it fell through for a lack of volunteers. No, Edmontonians went one up on that and actually increased their power consumption during the day. (We did the same during Earth Hour earlier this year.)
I’m apparently an Uzi. I was hoping for a Glock.
Iran has evidently become the target of a second cyber attack.
This time, it’s the “Stars” virus, or some such. One wonders if this, too, was an engineered virus targeting industrial control systems?
Canada does not even rank in the top ten as regards internet freedom enjoyed by its citizens.
This saddens me.
Estonia comes out on top, with the US in the #2 slot.
It turns superstore bar codes into music, apparently. Check out the video at the link for details.
End of an era: the typewriter is officially no more.
The last typewriter factory in the world just closed down.
Tonight’s post brought to you by accountants:
They ruin everything.
Unrelated but a social drinking game for next friday:
Watch the whole broadcast of the royal wedding, whenever the commentator say WEDDING, drink a shot. If you want to play the grown up version, additionally drink a shot when he/she says DRESS.
You need to be in the right time zone, though 😉
If I Didn’t have a newborn here, I’d might conider this for friday. Only shows you that even at 35 you can/want still do stupid things…
“one doesn’t simply cash-accrual account into mordor”
Brilliant!
Also, it seems I was a .44 magnum. Not what I would prefer (would have been happy with a beretta or perhaps some sort of rifle?)… not sure what it says about me either. I didn’t even pick Dirty Harry!
On the subject of the wedding, I’m a staunch republican. I’ll be getting the day off though, so it’s not all bad.
Hmmn…a drinking game, eh?
Well, then, let us begin by assembling a list of canonically permissible alcoholic beverages, such as have graced the various Ultima titles.
Ultima 6 had ale/beer, mead, and wine. Have we anything else to work with?
Well, Serpent Isle had that special Fawnish Ale that makes you vomit.
Two points.
Point one is that I’ve been assuming the Nightly Open Thread is for discussing whatever we want, so I’m probably going to start using it nearly exclusively for news updates. I’m thinking about making the actual Sanctimonia web site very basic and only for earth shattering news. Aiera is an outstanding, completely superior forum for news about Sanctimonia and any other Ultima-related project, and I’d like to make it my primary venue for “press releases”, for lack of a better term.
Point two is that object generation in Sanctimonia is progressing like a wildfire in a parched field of grass. The finer points of point two include:
1) Program logic now dictates that I treat flora and persistent world objects (inanimate objects) as the same with regard to object data files and network transactions. The server will still treat flora differently than PWOs (growth, reproduction, death, etc.), but structurally they are very similar and must be bound together for efficiency’s sake. Fauna however will be treated as players/NPCs since they are also functionally similar. Depending on how similarly I implement them, this may make it possible to actually play the game as fauna, which would be cool. Nothing makes hunting fun like a human controlling the deer. 😉
2) Littoral’s ability to generate both flora and PWOs, including per-object probability maps which overlay the world map, is 100% finished. 100% is not an exaggeration. The maximum number of object generation attempts per cell is specified in code (currently 1000) and object stem (base) and cap (top) sizes are collision checked to ensure objects do not intersect when generation is attempted. Littoral progresses through each region (32^2 cells), within which it further progresses though each cell (32^2 tiles) within that region, and writes the generated objects’ data to object data files using the correct directory and file hierarchy and naming convention.
3) I’ve implemented most of the code for both the client and server modules to read, send and interpret the object data so that it may be rendered by the client. This part is about 75% done. Give me another couple of days, and lush forests will be on my YouTube channel. 🙂
Final point… Survey says I’m also an Uzi, though it wouldn’t be my weapon of choice in most situations. I’d prefer this one:
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/9882/saiga12sisp3009ak8.jpg
Good home defense weapon as long as you don’t hit a stud. Drywall won’t stop it though.
Sanctimonia:
You assume correctly!
You flatter me, but you’re more than welcome to do so. If you like, I can enable what amounts to “guest posting” access for you and walk you through how the posting system here works, so you don’t even need to rely on the comment forms. Unless, of course, you want to…in which case, by all means do so!
That’s a pretty sweet list of updates; I’ll be sure to post about it when I get a moment.