I was browsing the excellent Bad Science Blog and I came across this post about Phun, a “2D physics sandbox”. The idea will be familiar to anyone who’s played Crayon Physics - you draw shapes, which then become solid and interact according to the Laws Of The Universe. Phun is much, much more powerful though… watch the video and you’ll see the kind of stuff you can do. And then download it. That part’s important.
Archive for March, 2008
Not sure what happened there. But to get things started up again… well, if you haven’t already seen it, check out BigDog, the quadruped robot. It’s really cool and all, but with the way it minces around it does look kind of prissy. Like it’s constantly having a tiny robotic tantrum.
Stay tuned over the next few days for a thing. And look! You can now share things. With people.
If you’re in the market for some laffs and bad grammar, be sure to read up on happenings as they pertain to my main dude Andy.
I happened across this on Wikipedia:
Going commando, the act of not wearing undergarments in popular culture
That’s pretty specific. What if you don’t wear underwear at, say, an opera? Is there a different name for that? I suggest something along the lines of “going commandeau”.
Via reddit: Wikihistory by Desmond Warzel, a very good flash piece about fictional science.
Please finally note that, after some arse-aroundery, we have decided that from now on Ill Repute will update twice weekly: Eli’s post on Monday, George’s on Thursday. Do have a read.
Edit: Make that George on Monday, Eli on Thursday. Arses are still mildly rotating.
Four days late on this one, but languagehat has a great post on the origin of the term “pettifogger”. Most interesting is the following quote from the OED:
In German fugger, fucker, focker (see Grimm) has had the senses ‘monopolist, engrosser’, ‘usurer’, ‘man of great wealth’, ‘great merchant’, and, in certain dialects (doubtless originally through ironical use), ‘huckster, pedlar.’
That is marvellous. It’s well worth reading the full post.
Continuing on a similar tack, some fortuitous Wikistumbling has led me to my new favourite sentence: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” There’s also “James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher,” but that ain’t nothing but cheap trickery.
… in which George Fournier and Eli Mordino have diverse adventures.
Maybury has a post up about our recent interview with Radio 1 in which he tackles the claim that we, as writers, shouldn’t bother our heads with the business end of, uh, writing.
I will soundly second his assertion that
the business of writing is very much the business of the writer, literary fiction or otherwise. That includes the general administrative aspects of writing - how to make a submission, where to submit work, help with making contacts as much as the financial ends.
One of the panellists joked (was he joking? I don’t know, he laughed anyway) that writers would be scared off if they knew the truth about publishing. Well, having a half-arsed knowledge of the publishing industry, which you can pick up by wandering within ten feet of a bookshop, just makes writers paranoid, and I’m not sure how knowing what you’re getting into is supposed to be worse than getting a nasty surprise when you think you’ve finally made it.
I for one am much more comfortable now that I’ve built up a more detailed sense of how the business works. As I said in an unaired part of the interview, the single most useful piece of information I picked up on the writing course was how to do up a proposal to send to an agent or publisher. It seems immensely silly to suggest that writers shouldn’t pursue this kind of knowledge.
In Bruges in three words: well worth seeing.
It’s pretty slow at the start and some of the acting jarred for reasons I can’t put my finger on, but the characters are a lot of fun to watch and the story does draw you in. I think I’d enjoy it more on a second viewing - it’s one of those films that isn’t quite what you’re expecting it to be, so it can be hard to just relax and enjoy it the first time around.
I’m not sure what exactly constitutes “an Irish film”, but the writer/director and the two main* characters** are Irish and that’s good enough for me. So I feel comfortable saying: In Bruges is unusual for an Irish film, in much the same way that a book that isn’t about cottages in the 50s, that chick-lit story we seem to like, or The Seedy Underbelly Of The Celtic Tiger is unusual for an Irish novel. I mean, are we really allowed to write this kind of stuff? Are we allowed to… have fun?
* Warning: Poncey website.
** Warning: Impressive beard.
If you’re like me, and in all honesty you should be, then you know that co-op gaming is the way of the future. Enter Co-Optimus, a snappily-named site devoted to this marvellous pursuit, with reviews, news and a handy list of games that support proper old-styley buddy cop teamups.
Which leads me to, frankly, the main reason for this post: N+, the Xbox Live Arcade version of the excellent freeware platformer N, has a teamup mode. This includes dedicated multiplayer levels. How cool is that?
Trent Reznor’s latest wheeze, much like his previous, has been described in many quarters as “doing a Radiohead”. I don’t know, did people describe every CD release for the first few years as “doing an ABBA“?
It’s worth noting that Yorke & Co. never intended to revolutionise distribution, whereas Reznor most certainly does. The system in place for Ghosts I-IV represents a return to the drawing board after the disappointing results of the Saul Williams experiment; in other words, Reznor is committed to figuring out how to make this work. If someone with his profile can make a proper financial success of such a venture, who knows what it’ll kick-start.
Now obviously, NIN had a hefty fanbase in place before they came within shouting distance of a self-published album, and it’s true that anyone can start vomiting content onto the internet without a hope of meaningful success, but once the trails are blazed it will start to become a more and more viable route for emerging artists. Grim tidings abound, but it seems to me that should the new models be proven, the changes in the cultural landscape will be hard to predict.
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