Archive for October, 2004

Thanks for continuing to visit our Beatles site. You’ll notice on the left that we’ve added some news feeds. These are automatically updated provinding you with Beatles news every time you visit. We are in the process of retooling the Sgt. Pepper’s Army website, but as progress goes, it will take time. In the mean time enjoy the new Beatles News!

Yup, last night, I dreamt of “The Donald.” It was (as they often are) a strange dream that unfolded from a previous strange dream. I don’t know where the dream started, but I remember being at Dorion Bible Camp, but it was nothing like Dorion.

For starters the camp was situated on the south side of the lake, and though I was a counselor, I was sleeping in a top bunk. Anyway, Jenn and I were out in the lake, by the rocky shore and I noticed I cow out by one of the many nearby islands. It looked like it was trying to escape from somewhere. Then, there was an old lady with hip waders and some charts wading into shore. Jenn told me she was a scientist who lived at camp and was coming back from fishing.

We got out of the lake and as I mentioned, it was a rocky shore and I had rocks in my pants. When we got to our cabin, we found that Donald Trump was going to be visiting with us for a week or so. And he was such a normal guy. We all got along so well, that I felt silly asking him for an autograph for my friend — and that changed everything. It was as if recognising the Donald’s celebrity wrecked our relationship.

Strange dreams. It makes me think — you know on some blogs the writer has the posts sorted into categories? Well, if I ever did that, I think I post enough on my dreams that I could have a dream catagory.

Wow, it’s been a good long time since I posted last. I’d better do something about that, or I’ll loose my readers — all five of you. So, what’s topical — besides ointment?

Okay, the big meal of the last week was Thanksgiving, right? Wrong! First, as a disclaimer, Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful — a big turkey (sorry, no turkey bacon this year,) stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, gravey, buns, salad and veggies — quite a good spread. We’re still enjoying it too, but it looks like it’ll run out today.

The big meal of the past week though was breakfast the day after. We did Thanksgiving on Sunday afternoon, so Monday morning, we slept in then decided to go out for breakfast. Our favourite place for breakfast closed down this past spring. It was the Great Canadian Waffle House in Vanier. Our new regular breakfast place is the Elgin St. Diner which serves a great “hangover” breakfast including poutine. But Jenn felt like something new, so we went to a place called Cora’s. It serves what I’d call a Quebeqois breakfast, usually including a lot of fruit. My breakfast included a lot of pig. When all was said and done, I had three eggs, two sausages (the extra long kind) three strips of bacon, fried ham, fried potatos and a thick crépe. Mmm.

Oh, just for the record, Jenn and I are (normally) trying to keep to more sensible portion sizes and I’m down ten pounds to 205 since early September.

I stumbled across this phonetic l33t speak page a few days ago and thought that it would be an interesting follow up to the ever popular entry on phonetic English spelling. Really, this is just an excuse to put something up on the old blog… which has been pretty stale most of this week.

In other news, I’m thinking of taking down the Sgt. Pepper’s Army website (of course, I’ll have to run this by Rich first, I suppose) in favour of spending the money on a domain specifically for my portfolio. I’m in the process of revamping it and thought I’d make a little more separation between my “professional” and “personal” web presences.

Oh, and Jenn threatened to ground me tonight as we walked to the grocery store to pick up a few things for Thanksgiving. We’ve got a couple of those plastic grocery bins with the canvas-like straps. I was wearing it on my back — kind of like an upright turtle— and taking every oportunity to look over my shoulder (and swing the bin into Jenn.) She told me to stop it once, and then told me I was grounded. I retaliated by telling her I was going to blog about it. Then she told me she hopes our kids don’t turn out like me. Hee hee.

Oh, check this out… create a new post in Blogger, switch into preview mode and then edit the Title. Cool, no?

Robin entered a game of mine in a Commodore 64 game competition a couple of years ago. Part of the contest was the games had to fit in a very small chunk of memory. The game was “Cliff Diving” and it was recieved with modest praise — mostly becuase it was simple, cute looking and original I guess. The game had the player hurling himself off a cliff and tumbling to the ground below. The more flips and the closest to vertical the player landed gave better scores.

Robin entered another game of mine this year. I suppose it’s a game, but of course, like “Cliff Diving” it was never intended for public consumption. Anyways, some fellow who writes a monthly review of new Commodore 64 games got ahold of it and decided to review it. He was disapointed by it, but probably because he doesn’t know the history behind it. If he did, he probably wouldn’t have even review it. Here’s the review…

Game: The Driving Game
By: Shroom/PSW
Arbitrary Rating: 24%
One Liner: The Boring Game
Type: 4K Game/Freeware
Reviewer: A Life in Hell

“The Driving Game” is an eight way scrolling space shoot ‘em up, which pits you against the evil forces of the Evil Monsters. It is your mission, which you have no choice but to accept, to drive home to these evil, Evil Monsters. The fate of the universe is, as always, in your hands. Actually, that’s a completely different game.

The obviously titled Driving Game, boasts the accompanying blurb, features “sprite, sound effect!” Originally, we thought that Shroom had exactly the qualifications required to write for Game Overview, but then we played the game, and discovered that no, this wasn’t a typo, the game does in fact proudly feature one sprite, an overhead view of your car, and one sound effect — the sound of your car crashing into the overhead view road.

While being vertically scrolling, rather than third person 3D, The Driving Game visually resembles the Atari classic “Night Driver,” using the same method of only displaying objects to represent the side of the road instead of actually displaying a road. This would be forgivable if the game moved fast, but as it stands it moves quite slowly — an unfortunate consequence of being written in BASIC — and lacks anything to do but avoid the sides of the road lurching forward. Yes, the road is long and varied, but just driving without any other cars can get very tiresome very quickly, especially with no scenery to admire or soundtrack to listen to.

The Driving Game is a participant in the minigame competition, and can be downloaded from ffd2.com/minigame

…here’s a little background for you on the Driving Game. The sprite (graphic) is a total rip-off from Ocean’s Miami Vice game so I can date this game from around 1986 — or the first couple years of high school. I remember thinking the graphic of the car was cool so I recreated it and wrapped a simple BASIC game around it. I was am notorious for not finishing games that I start, maybe I gave Robin a copy to show him that I do finish some things. Anyway, this review almost gives me incentive to create “The Driving Game 2005” for next year’s mini-compo. I hope the judges for the contest find more merit in this effort than Game Overview did.

Today — after pulling ourselves off the couch at 10:00 a.m. — Jenn and I hit the road for an extended day of wandering about. We started by heading to the Christian bookstore and using the 25% off coupon to get the Systematic Theology book by Wayne Grudem I’ve had my eye on for a few months. As we were walking out to the car, Jenn took it away from me and told me it was going to be my birthday present and that I couldn’t read it for a month! What a rip off!

Then we headed across town, thinking that we’d eventually hit Ikea and have a hotdog for lunch. But, on the way, we were going by the other Christian bookstore to see what they had. There was a dude dressed up as a Roman soldier there. He was an author and was promoting his book by offering to sign it if we bought it. I had already bought my book for the day, so after pretending to consider it, I put it on the shelf and moved on. I checked out the bargin CDs to see if Jenn would really go for them like she insinuated yesterday. She didn’t, but I did manage to sell a guy on Skinny for $2.99.

Oh, I forgot to mention that in the same plaza as that bookstore, we stopped into this cool Italian grocery with all sorts of good food and deli meats and cheeses and a cafeteria and — oh, it was great. So, we had lunch there instead of Ikea. We left that area kinda through the back way, because there was a lot of traffic and eventually started driving south and west of the city. We ended up in Munster, Ontario at Saunders Farm where they have the biggest corn mazes in North America. But it was overcast, with an occasional shower, so we didn’t shell out the $15 a head to try them out. Instead we kept driving in the country — and Jenn got some sleep.

Eventually we got back to south Ottawa, Barhaven to be exact and had coffee at a little shop near where my cousin works — Fiamma is where she works and it’s a great little restaurant with good food and a contemporary atmosphere. While reading a paper there we noticed that there were model homes open in the area, so we spent the rest of the afternoon checking out six different homes going up in a crazy, huge, subdivision there. I left the sunroof open a crack and it ended up pouring, so on the way home Jenn sat in the back seat.

So, yesterday I was at the local Christian bookstore — unfortunately it’s not that local to my location — checking out their stock for an upcoming sale. I wandered downstairs after spending some time reading in the aisles upstairs to see their music selection and pick up a Christmas present for my newphew. Which brings me to my first point… I thought that Big Idea tanked early this year or late last year, but I bought what looked like a new Veggie Tales DVD — Sumo of the Opera. I might have to open it up and watch it before I wrap it up for the kid later.

Second point… Steve Hindalong’s Skinny in the bargin bin for $2.99! Crazy! And there were at least six or seven copies! So, maybe I’ll have to pick up some more cheap Christmas presents next time I’m there — so I can share the love. There was also a Poor Old Lu and an Aaron Sprinkle in the bin, but not for nearly the low, low price of Skinny or I would have snapped them up too. Jenn likes POL and AS, so if they’re still there and marked down further next time we’re there, I’ll probably get them.