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Entries from April 2012
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Ludum Dare 23: T in Y World (24 Apr 2012 at 23:37)
T in Y World
T in Y World - Play that thing!


Sup guys. I made this game in 48 hours for Ludum Dare #23, whose theme was "Tiny World". It is an experimental homage to an old game called ZZT, with some twists like that everyone can edit the game world, making it a Moderately Multiplayer On-Line Rule Playing Game. Other features:

Very expensive simulated color-ASCII graphics
Content & technology double-whammy
False dichotomy
Four new music tracks, including shamelessly self-referential theme song
You can turn off the annoying music
Spoiler 1
Thrilling Computer Science based gameplay
Integrated level editor
Spoiler 2
Boss battle!!


You can play it or get the soundtrack, or both!
Categories:  mp3  hacks  video games  ludum dare (35 comments — 9 months ago)   [ comment ]
Entries from March 2012
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SIGBOVIK 2012: The National Month Of Pushing Spacebar (31 Mar 2012 at 22:31)
SIGBOVIK was upon us once again and now it is off. This is CMU's annual satirical research conference, which pokes fun at academics and itself. The conference website has approximately "one nine" of reliability, and is currently down, but when it's up you can probably find this year's proceedings. The papers are no more than half the fun, though. Something else that's not quite half the fun is the conference event, which I emceed again this year. It was a good one, with lots of fresh contributors and a pretty full house and cake.

This year I contributed to the probably-could-work A Modest Proposal for the Purity of Programming, the probably-could-work-but-not-with-that-much-beer Algorithms for k/n Power Hours, the juvenile where is my pants ("play"), and my main submission, The National Month of Pushing Spacebar. If you read only one (or none) make it that one (or none). The paper describes a contest which you can partake in, taking par now (if now is within 30 days of posting), at the website national.month.of.pushing.spacebar.org. But start with the paper.
Categories:  hacks  sigbovik (2 comments — almost 5 years ago)   [ comment ]
Entries from February 2012
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T7ES - Theme from large dark (29 Feb 2012 at 23:51)
Today I wrote a new short music for February. It's pretty 16-bit.

Theme from large dark
Tom 7 Entertainment System - Theme from large dark
Categories:  t7es  mp3 (8 comments — almost 12 years ago)   [ comment ]
Entries from January 2012
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Eulogy for Tom 6 (31 Jan 2012 at 23:00)
Guys, my dad died. It happened earlier this month. We knew it was coming for a while, so we got to do a lot of preparation, which was nice. But still pretty sad. I may write more about this since I think there are some good stories (though it is difficult to write about), but I wanted to at least share the Eulogy I wrote for him, which I gave at the funeral.

 clip 'n save
Oh, man. I’ve actually been stressed about this since my father spoke at his own father’s funeral (Tom 5), years ago. He did a really good job and I realized I would have to do it for him some day. I thought about it a lot but I didn’t even really write anything until last night, I guess because I was afraid I wouldn’t do him justice. I’ll try.


The most amazing thing to me about my father was how selfless he was. He spent his whole adult life working tirelessly in public service and providing for his family. He saw us become the men and women we are, but didn’t get to enjoy the retirement he deserved. Yet he told me that he wouldn’t do it any differently, and I believe him—at Christmases his favorite thing was not giving nor receiving gifts but just watching us give each other gifts.

Sometimes he was working completely “behind the scenes” to make things go better for you; he didn’t need you to know that he did it. He would silently pay your car insurance or student loans if you were low on money, even if he was low on money. We discovered after he died that he kept a stash of wine bottles hidden so that he could replenish mom’s supply if she ran out at an inopportune time. Before I was born, when he and my mom lived in New Haven, dad protected her from a knife-wielding intruder, wrestling this guy down the stairs after getting stabbed multiple times, puncturing his lung. I didn’t even hear the story until I was an adult. I couldn’t believe that. I would tell my kids all the time: Oh, that’s cool that you’re watching He-Man, but did you know that that I’m an actual real master of the universe? He didn’t tell us, first I assume to protect us from the idea that there were even scary people in the world, and second because he was just that kind of humble guy. He was my hero even before I knew, anyway.

As you probably know he had no fear of doing things openly if he thought that was the right way. Ask any kid for a story of him embarrassing us together or individually. When we visited CMU, which is the school I ended up going to, I had been kind of disappointed with the official tour. He took the unimaginably embarrassing step of just walking into someone’s office in the computer science department (turned out to be like the associate dean) and asking for a tour. She was initially like, um, no? as my mom and I hid our faces in shame. But after he politely thanked her and left, she decided she needed a break after all and gave us a great insider’s tour, and honestly that made the difference for me, and it changed my life.

Which he did in lots of other ways. They’re easy to see: He instilled in us the importance of hard work and family. He valued teaching; Taylor and Kerrigan are teachers and Mike and I loved to teach while in grad school, too. Dad loved making things, his home filled with homemade furniture and most recently the effing greenhouse. Mike and I are engineers, Taylor a carpenter. We really fall in love, and fall hard. And writing, and public speaking, and telling stories, and tennis, and playing guitar. It’s trite to say but I do actually feel like he is a part of all of us. I care about the same things he does, and not just to honor him, but because it’s actually who I am.


Dad loved to brag about us so let me brag about him for a bit. In the days following his death there were several newspaper articles about him, and spots on TV and NPR. At his wake yesterday I counted about 500 people. In addition to the friends and family that made the trip, there were 10 reporters, many who told us he was their favorite to work with, superintendents, the commissioner of education, who told us that at a recent meeting of education bigwigs, they held a moment of silence for him and then went around the table sharing stories and kind words. A US Senator came. But what struck me most was not the volume of visitors but the consistency of their praise: He was a rare and great man. He saved my butt on many occasions. He knew everything but didn’t make you feel like he was smarter than you. He always went out of his way to help. We loved him. You boys look so much like him (which I take to mean that he was very, very handsome).


Dad’s presence in the world made it a better place, and so he deserved to live for decades more. But there are many positive things about the way he died that we’re thankful for. We knew it was coming, despite his attempts to protect us from it, and we were able to prepare for a long time. In the last five years we grew closer as a family. All of the kids got to say goodbye properly, and we heard him say he was proud of us, and that we are proud of him. And mom never left him for his last month, sleeping beside him, watching the sunrise, taking care of him. I saw them share many special moments, and she cherished it like being on a long camping vacation, which is how much they loved each other. We savored little things that in other circumstances we’d take for granted. His stories. His poking fun. His touch. How he won over all of the nursing staff. Pie drawers. Our scrappy and sentimental Christmas Eve and Christmas in hospice, arguably the best ever. We made our old house appear to be wheelchair-accessible and managed to get him home again after more than a month away, and he was so happy to be there that I think we made the van driver cry. The stream of visitors with kind words and stories and pepper spray. Dad counted his blessings for them: His beautiful wife, his children and their loved ones, keeping him company every day.

And he tried to provide for us from that bed, willing himself to stay alive to collect one more social security check, giving me stock tips (which were actually good), life advice, long shots in on-line horse racing, telling us not to miss the stash of diamonds he had in his glove compartment (??) that he was going to use to make mom a piece of jewelry. And he tended to our feelings, always taking an optimistic view in the bleakest of circumstances, making us feel as okay as he did, which was... okay.


So I say that dad won his battle with cancer, because he didn’t let it change him. He was himself to the end, he died right, and as he kept telling us, he had a good run. I’ll miss you, dad, we all will, but you’ll always be with us.

Love,
everybody.
Category:  momentous (8 comments — 12 years ago)   [ comment ]
Entries from December 2011
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Some Ludum Dare #22 reviews (31 Dec 2011 at 21:16)
Hello everybody. I had hoped to make a game for Ludum Dare this time around, as it is one of my favorite quarterly events. Unfortunately I had to head home to CT early because of my dad's health (more on that later), which has also led to a lot of idle time in which to get really good at iPhone games and play some of the Ludum Dare entries. I've got a lot more to go (a preposterous 891 entries this time), but some favorites so far to discharge my obligation for December 2012:

The Word Alone is a very clever word game. It's pretty easy once you figure out how to do it, but it's quite fun to figure out how to do it. Word games are pretty unusual for Ludum Dare!
The Last Geek should have been called "Super Vegetable Boy"—it's basically an homage to Super Meat Boy with a twist. Really quite complete, probably the most content in the competition.
Nyan Nyan Stack is a cute platform puzzler with charming CGA graphics and dialogue. It's pretty hard but the puzzles are good and it's not too long.
Final Trip Soccer has lovely graphics and plays smooth as laxative. Has a great surprise. Can't believe all this was done in 48 hours!
Urine Trouble is pretty juvenile, but I did laugh a lot at its absurdity while playing.
/follow has some of the best graphics I've seen in a Ludum Dare entry, and is a pretty fun and easy little clicky adventure. I'm happy this one was a three-person 72-hour jam entry so I don't need to feel too inadequate.


I love playing these, especially sleeper hits, so please hook me up if you have found any other gold. And happy 2012!
Category:  video games (4 comments — almost 11 years ago)   [ comment ]
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