is a blog by Brendan
So I opened Facebook and saw this much of an ad on my screen:
And I was like, “What, does she need emergency reverse liposuction? I mean, obviously she DOES, but is that going to save her–oh.” Because by this point I had copied the image out and could see the first frame of the animated gif, to which it apparently never resets:
Hi! St. Jude? Call me. We need to talk about this concept called “above the fold.”
HOORAY
I get to fuck the planet JUST LIKE YOU
Now, to get out of this state as fast as fucking possible.
From the LJ comments on yesterday’s story:
Stephen: Man, you must draw inspiration from some shitkicking women, Brendan.
Me: Pretty much, yeah!
At Lisa’s persistent instigation, Will, Kyle and I drove up to Pittsburgh on Friday to jam on games for the One Laptop Per Child Project. We actually got to handle some of the XO prototypes, which are even smaller than I expected, but also pretty neat.
We didn’t win, but we did create a complete game, albeit one that only fully worked four hours after the judging round. We also had a lot of fun, and not a lot of sleep. Some of the other projects looked great, and the winner was really polished–I have no doubt it will end up as part of the standard XO package.
I feel bad about the way the game turned out, because all the delays and problems were due entirely to my inexperience in the required tools (Python and Pygame). On the other hand, I’ve been mumbling about needing to learn Python for four years now, and now I have! Mumbled. I mean, learned.
The game (“Caketown”) lacks a lot of things (an intro, an outro, more than two levels, etc) but I’m going to post it anyway so you can hear Kyle’s fantastic music and see Will’s amazing art. What you don’t get to see is Lisa’s work as project coordinator, colorist and, now, one of the few living experts on how to install software on the XO.
Here it is as a Windows executable, in zip or gzip form (I recommend unzipping to C:\Caketown\). If you’re not running Windows, you can have the gzipped source and data, but you’ll need Python and Pygame installed to use it. You could also wait a little while, as I really do want to put together a finished and more coherent version with code that will not, when read, summon Nyarlathotep (the Crawling Chaos).
Weird footnote: unexpectedly, I recognized and got to meet a couple of people I knew or knew of from Internet (Bryan Cash and Tom Murphy). And they were both kind of startled / scared! But somebody did that to me once so it’s only fair.
I took my first road test yesterday. I managed to parallel park in a space exactly the same size as Scott’s (kindly) borrowed SUV, but on reflection, I’m kind of glad we stopped after I made the wrong turnabout.
Can you believe Sam Elliott’s IMDB photo shows him without a moustache? I mean, it doesn’t even look like him!
Ian and I typed almost simultaneously today that his only real job in Tombstone (which I finally saw, and did anyone else realize that Ben Foster was doing a Val Kilmer imitation throughout 3:10 to Yuma?) was to grow a moustache, which is also what he did in The Big Lebowski and (apparently) Ghost Rider. Looks like he’ll be reprising that role in The Golden Compass. You can’t argue with success.
I guess it’s like they say: some are born to moustache, some achieve moustache, and some have moustache thrust upon them.
I’m willing to bet that anyone who meets Sam Elliott quickly becomes the latter.
