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2004 04 26 - Mon

Support our troops?

posted by jack at 10:00 CET in / politics feed

Hmmm. For a long time, I've consistently held the opinion that even though the U.S invasion of Iraq is wrong-headed, that the troops who are stuck in the mess over there are worthy of support, since none of them created this war and are presumably trying to make the best of a tough situation.

But then again, there are things like this Don't Loot video that are just scary as all get-out. For those who haven't/can't/won't view that clip, here's an executive summary of this brief clip from frontline:

  • Somewhere in Iraq, looting is occurring. Reporters arrive on the scene.
  • U.S. soldiers are there, and have arrested some men for looting. The men have apparently taken a couple armloads of lumber and stacked it on top of their car.
  • One soldier explains for the camera that "We tried to stop them from looting, they don't understand, so we'll take their car and we'll crush it."
  • A couple of soldiers shoot at the car with pistols a bit.
  • The soldiers crush the car by driving a tank over it.

I think that the mental exercise of reversing roles can be a useful thing to do here. What if my country was on the verge of civil war after an invading army had removed a brutal dictator but simultaneously destroyed much of my country's infrastructure? Perhaps lumber would be hard to come by. Perhaps I might take advantage of available resources, particularly if it seemed like they were going unused. I sure don't that that punishing me for this "crime" by crushing my only means of transportation would be a noble endeavor on the invading army's part.

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Comments
Re: Support our troops?
John Nutting wrote on Tue, 18 May 2004 00:55

I agree with you, and I am I guess a relative. I have been told all us Nuttings are related but I have yet to find out how. I will be reading what you post..


[ reply to this ]
Re: Support our troops?
(blank) wrote on Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:09

U.S. SOLDIER: We try to stop them from looting, and they don't understand, so we take their car and we crush it, the United States Army tankers. That's what you get when you loot.

NARRATOR: Later, the car's owner told us, "I am a taxi driver. The car was my livelihood."

If anyone else, like me, is looking to find out if this is real (I saw the clip on YouTube and it referenced a joke site, so I was hoping it was fake), you can see it just over seven minutes into the program. It is not a hoax, it is not set up, and it is very, very disturbing. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/etc/script.html (search for the text above) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/talk/ (see the response in the first grey box from Frontline producers)


[ reply to this ]
2004 04 20 - Tue

spinvaders 0.0.1

posted by jack at 11:24 CET in / compute / programming / spinvaders feed

In my copious amounts of spare time (ha), I've recently been teaching myself both python and game programming using a fine cross-platform library called pygame. I have some results!

screenshotspinvaders is a direct descendant of the old "Space Invaders" type of game. This first public test release, version 0.0.1, is fully playable and may even be fun! The controls for the game are described at the startup screen, everything should be pretty obvious. One undocumented feature of this test version is that pressing "J" will let you jump to any level.

The Mac version is in a disk image; you can copy the enclosed application and run it from wherever you like. The Windows version is a zip file containing a directory; unpack the directory wherever you like, and run it by starting "spinvaders.exe" from within the directory.

Please try it out and let me know what you think by adding a comment below.

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Comments
Re: Support our troops?
John Nutting wrote on Tue, 18 May 2004 00:55

I agree with you, and I am I guess a relative. I have been told all us Nuttings are related but I have yet to find out how. I will be reading what you post..


[ reply to this ]
Re: Support our troops?
(blank) wrote on Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:09

U.S. SOLDIER: We try to stop them from looting, and they don't understand, so we take their car and we crush it, the United States Army tankers. That's what you get when you loot.

NARRATOR: Later, the car's owner told us, "I am a taxi driver. The car was my livelihood."

If anyone else, like me, is looking to find out if this is real (I saw the clip on YouTube and it referenced a joke site, so I was hoping it was fake), you can see it just over seven minutes into the program. It is not a hoax, it is not set up, and it is very, very disturbing. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/etc/script.html (search for the text above) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/talk/ (see the response in the first grey box from Frontline producers)


[ reply to this ]
Re: spinvaders 0.0.1
Nick wrote on Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:43

spinvaders is the most addictive game i have ever played. i stayed up for 96 hours with eyes glued to the screen...my wife finally had to burn the computer to get me away from it.


[ reply to this ]
Re: spinvaders 0.0.1
Nick wrote on Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:49

P.S. You should port BLAZEMONGER to python.


[ reply to this ]
0.0.1 doesn't run here
Jeff wrote on Thu, 22 Apr 2004 00:02

Mac os x 10.3.3 (whatever the latest is).

nothing under the spinvaders menu

Maybe it's the python that's with mac os... do I need an upgrade from macpython or whatever? Give me a link if so.

Thanks


[ reply to this ]
 
Re: 0.0.1 doesn't run here
Jack wrote on Thu, 22 Apr 2004 06:25

You don't have a window opening up or anything? The menu is normally empty (at this point... I intend to populate this eventually, but it's a bit more laborious using python than good old Objective-C), but you should have a smallish (320x320) window opening up where the actual gameplay occurs. If not, could you check your Console logs and see if you see anything suspicious there?


[ reply to this ]
 
BSD package
Jack wrote on Tue, 25 May 2004 14:53

Make sure you have the "optional" BSD package installed. You may have unchecked this when installing Mac OS X, in which case you'll be missing a couple of key pieces which are required to run python software such as spinvaders.


[ reply to this ]
Re: spinvaders 0.0.1
Martin wrote on Sun, 27 Jun 2004 15:27

What's specific about 10.3? Why won't it work on 10.2.8?


[ reply to this ]
 
10.3 includes python
Jack wrote on Thu, 01 Jul 2004 16:58

10.3 is the first version of Mac OS X that includes the python interpreter. It would be pretty easy for me to build this for 10.2.8, making it use a version of python contained in the app, but it would require me reinstalling 10.2 on a machine somwhere (and I haven't gotten around to it).

Supporting 10.2 would be nice I suppose, although as time goes by it will be less and less of an issue...


[ reply to this ]
2004 04 14 - Wed

slutspurt

posted by jack at 10:42 CET in / humor / funny_swedish feed

slutspurt In Swedish, slutspurt means roughly "final push" and can be applied to almost anything: the conclusion of a sporting event, the final stages of a project, etc.

In English, Slutspurt just sounds like the name of a porn flick. Perhaps even a whole series!

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Comments
Re: Support our troops?
John Nutting wrote on Tue, 18 May 2004 00:55

I agree with you, and I am I guess a relative. I have been told all us Nuttings are related but I have yet to find out how. I will be reading what you post..


[ reply to this ]
Re: Support our troops?
(blank) wrote on Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:09

U.S. SOLDIER: We try to stop them from looting, and they don't understand, so we take their car and we crush it, the United States Army tankers. That's what you get when you loot.

NARRATOR: Later, the car's owner told us, "I am a taxi driver. The car was my livelihood."

If anyone else, like me, is looking to find out if this is real (I saw the clip on YouTube and it referenced a joke site, so I was hoping it was fake), you can see it just over seven minutes into the program. It is not a hoax, it is not set up, and it is very, very disturbing. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/etc/script.html (search for the text above) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/talk/ (see the response in the first grey box from Frontline producers)


[ reply to this ]
Re: spinvaders 0.0.1
Nick wrote on Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:43

spinvaders is the most addictive game i have ever played. i stayed up for 96 hours with eyes glued to the screen...my wife finally had to burn the computer to get me away from it.


[ reply to this ]
Re: spinvaders 0.0.1
Nick wrote on Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:49

P.S. You should port BLAZEMONGER to python.


[ reply to this ]
0.0.1 doesn't run here
Jeff wrote on Thu, 22 Apr 2004 00:02

Mac os x 10.3.3 (whatever the latest is).

nothing under the spinvaders menu

Maybe it's the python that's with mac os... do I need an upgrade from macpython or whatever? Give me a link if so.

Thanks


[ reply to this ]
 
Re: 0.0.1 doesn't run here
Jack wrote on Thu, 22 Apr 2004 06:25

You don't have a window opening up or anything? The menu is normally empty (at this point... I intend to populate this eventually, but it's a bit more laborious using python than good old Objective-C), but you should have a smallish (320x320) window opening up where the actual gameplay occurs. If not, could you check your Console logs and see if you see anything suspicious there?


[ reply to this ]
 
BSD package
Jack wrote on Tue, 25 May 2004 14:53

Make sure you have the "optional" BSD package installed. You may have unchecked this when installing Mac OS X, in which case you'll be missing a couple of key pieces which are required to run python software such as spinvaders.


[ reply to this ]
Re: spinvaders 0.0.1
Martin wrote on Sun, 27 Jun 2004 15:27

What's specific about 10.3? Why won't it work on 10.2.8?


[ reply to this ]
 
10.3 includes python
Jack wrote on Thu, 01 Jul 2004 16:58

10.3 is the first version of Mac OS X that includes the python interpreter. It would be pretty easy for me to build this for 10.2.8, making it use a version of python contained in the app, but it would require me reinstalling 10.2 on a machine somwhere (and I haven't gotten around to it).

Supporting 10.2 would be nice I suppose, although as time goes by it will be less and less of an issue...


[ reply to this ]
Re: slutspurt
wrote on Sun, 28 May 2006 18:17

hahahahhahahahah this is soooooooo funny!! jmahahahah


[ reply to this ]
Re: slutspurt
alquestanadanos wrote on Wed, 19 Jul 2006 01:53

in denmark slutspurt refers to the legs of a young slut spread wide open and the spurting minions of hoses applied.


[ reply to this ]
2004 04 05 - Mon

the revolution will not be televised

posted by jack at 12:44 CET in / politics feed

So the glorious Air America is off to a nice start. I managed to listen to the first few minutes of Al Franken's first broadcast before Real Player crapped out (I guess the servers weren't quite up for the initial rush), and have so far only heard bits of various shows. For some reason it seems like I mostly hear Randi Rhodes whenever I tune in, and usually she's griping about the same stuff over and over again. I mean, she's a really good griper and all, but I'd like to hear a little more variation in the griping.

I'm not that happy with the schedule since I'm 6 hours ahead of New York which means that The O'Franken Factor is splattered right across my early evening, the time of day when I'm busy with giving children dinner and baths and putting them to bed, but what the heck. I'm just totally jazzed to hear talk radio that is actually critical of the Bush-Cheney Axis of Fascism for a change.

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