not falling down

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.

Sometimes I am mean! Sometimes I am a mean person.

But she started it.

Mom and Grammo, you might not want to read this.

I got a new phone a couple months ago, with a reassigned number, and sometimes I get unexpected phone calls for the person who used to have it (I believe her name is Kate). What I had not received–until last night–was unexpected text messages.

Dis is diamond do
lee like me

I am not as young as I once was, and I confess this took me a while to parse. At first I thought it might be some kind of arcane dance instruction. Eventually, I determined that I was being asked to be some sort of intermediary. So wasn’t it only fair that I be brutally honest with Diamond?

no,

I replied,

he said hes in2
guyz now lol

Diamond was understandably confused! I soon came to see why:

Who u talkin
about im talkin
about leeanna
dat light skin gay
gurl

Ah, so I was being asked to play Cupid between lesbians. Having been burned on this before, I resisted.

Oh dat bitch, she
a ho u dont want
nun a her, she
got the gwarts

At this point, Diamond called me. I let it ring through to voicemail; surely when she heard my greeting she’d figure things out for herself.

Then she texted again.

Ray who u talkin about

(Ray! I… am… Ray!)

im talkin about dat gurl
dat was wit us
today

At this point we picked up our takeout food and I decided to let the matter drop.

Until the next morning, when Diamond called me again, then texted when I didn’t
pick up.

Get up n start
gettin ready cuz
im goin 2 the
library at 11

Despite a resurgent suspicion that my dance-instruction hypothesis was correct after all, I decided to come clean.

Okay, I can’t
keep this up anymore.
Have you not figured
out from the
voicemail
greeting that I’m
not whoever you
think I am?

Diamond had now had T-Mobile shout “Bren. Dan’s. VOICEMAIL!” twice at her, so naturally she sought clarification.

Who is dis

Dis is Brendan.
Like it says, very
loudly, when you
call my voicemail.
Listen, if you
hook up with Lee
you’ll send me
pics, right?

Either Diamond wanted to confirm said greeting once and for all or I had finally drawn her ire. She called a third time, and then:

Tis is diamond
mom if she do
hook up ill kill her
want a pic of
that dont ask no
more dum ass
question i kill u
diam is not a hoe
dont ask 4 no
pics

Now the teenage lesbian was pretending to be someone else! In Soviet Russia, Internet wastes time on you! But the sheer verbosity of her reply surely indicated that her blood was up; I thought maybe that was the place to stop.

It only took her half an hour to start gloating.

U dont have any
more dum ass
questions freak

You poked the bears! Why did you do that! Will suggested an appropriate greeting for my final reply.

Dear Mrs. Diamond:
Your textual fusillade
has left me chagrined.
You’ll have no more
dum ass questions
from me; forthwith,
I’ll issue only
the most
erudite queries.

Now pics or gtfo.

Sadly for us, dear reader, she chose the latter optin.

Good bye & dont
text my phone 4
diamond

And there, it would appear, the matter rests.

I just wish she’d accidentally typed in Ken’s number all those times instead.

This is the entry where I gush about my mp3 player! Pretend it’s 2002.

My messenger bag is considerably lighter now that I’m not carrying my Discman and fifty CDs in it all the time, and I never have to try to hold three things while standing up again. That’s awesome! I sneakily got a refurbished Shuffle directly from Apple, so I got the one-gig version for the 512 price, and it’s still got a year warranty. That is also awesome! I get to carry the Magic Future Perfect* Radio Mix Tape From Heaven around in my pocket and it makes me happy.

It doesn’t introduce me to new music like the radio and mix tapes are supposed to do (remember when the radio introduced you to new music? Ha ha!), but that’s what I have Lisa and Will and Maria and Ken for. Ken, move back already, dammit.

The audio quality on the Shuffle is really excellent–I’ve actually noticed instruments in the midrange I never heard before, and there are none of the audible compression artifacts I used to get with my mp3-CD player. The one thing it doesn’t have is a bass boost, which is crippling. I am a little bit addicted to my bass boost. I am addicted enough that tonight I purchased paraphernalia with which to enjoy my dependency. Having an equalizer the size of a pack of cigarettes really destroys the point of having a music player the size of a stick of gum, but man, I was getting the dee tees. I’ll probably bitch later about how it works out.

Before I knew the Koss equalizer existed, I was actually considering looking for some converters and a battery-operated guitar effects pedal that would let me change the bass, and just carrying that around instead. Then I thought “ah, but that would strip the signal to mono.” Then I thought “and would be completely insane.“

I was annoyed at first that I had to partition the areas for audio storage and file storage separately, but I fit every song I wanted in less than the 800 megs I’d reserved. There is a remedy, as it turns out, but honestly I’m only using it to listen to the second good duet in the history of pop over and over again.

(The first, and previously only, was “Under Pressure.” Bowie and Queen.)

* A grammar joke!

I never talked about Sad and Happy Movie Day! Sad and Happy Movie Day was great! In attendance were myself, Maria, Lisa, Scott and Will; Maria’s brother Michael showed up for the second movie. We watched City of God and Shaolin Soccer, as was foretold by the ancients–first one subbed, second dubbed, but the dubbing actually worked really well for SS. It added to the goofiness of a film that takes its goofiness very seriously. City of God was appropriately poverty-stricken and filled with violence by and against children. The ending was not actually sad, but maybe that was for the best. We are still testing our toes in this format.

The next SAHMD will probably be in two or three weeks, whatever’s best for most of us. Hackers has been pretty thoroughly shot down, because all my friends are worthless Philistines, but I don’t think anybody objected to What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Are there any strong objections to that? What about suggestions for happy movies? Information access protocol!