Monthly archive: July, 2008

Are You Authorised

Since I’ve just restarted Authority development after six months I thought I ought to quicken the pace of updates on the blog, so here we go. After some teething problems (i.e. every page taking five seconds to load because I was making over 1000 database queries a hit) the new game code is working very nicely and I’ve got almost all of the old Authority functions re-implemented. I’ve also added a new game management panel to the interface which I’m liking the look of*:

*figuratively speaking. I’m not actually satisfied with the way it looks.

Categories: Projects » Games » Authority and Programming » PHP

The best “attack type” on Wikipedia

What am I talking about, you ask? The terrorist attack infobox on Wikipedia has a field for listing the “attack type”—aircraft attack, car bombing, that kind of thing; or, in the case of the Wall Street bombing, horse-drawn wagon bombing.

Categories: Incidentals and Humour » The best of Wikipedia

THE BEST ARTICLE ON WIKIPEDIA EVER

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusually-shaped_vegetable

Categories: Incidentals and Humour » The best of Wikipedia

The best serious description of an imperialist French elephant on Wikipedia

“Despite the presence of these counsellors, Babar’s rule seems to be totally independent of any elected body, and completely autocratic.”

Goddamn fascist elephant.

Categories: Incidentals and Humour » The best of Wikipedia

Return of the remixes (posters)

Remixing (i.e. changing the text on) vintage World War II propaganda posters is just something I do. This time, they’ve got nothing to do with the 2007 federal election.

  • corn
  • eat
  • monocles
  • rationing-fat
  • rationing-sales

And, as special bonus for anyone who has never had someone look at them weird after seeing their desktop wallpaper, I present the 1600×1200 “That’s Corn” wallpaper.

Categories: Design & graphics, Humour and Projects » Graphics » Remixed propaganda

High voltage

I’ve been looking at videos of plasma speakers and musical tesla coils on YouTube, and I now have two questions:

  • Why haven’t I heard about them before?
  • Why don’t I have one?

Also on YouTube: Steve Ballmer advertising Windows 2.0. I love the way he thinks he’s got charisma.

Categories: Humour and Things I did not make » Websites

Authority hasn’t been forgotten

The project has been on hiatus for about six months because past design and programming decisions had forced me into a corner when it came to the final portion of the game. This was a corner forcing the coding to be untidy and complicated. So! I’m overhauling a lot of the code and I’m confident this will make Authority happen and happen better. No timetable will be set at this point.

Categories: Projects » Games » Authority and Programming » PHP
Authority is an online strategy game with units and stuff, currently in development.

Redesign: Novus

Today I have launched the latest version of www.maestrosync.com, which I have given the rather uninspired title of Novus. Fundamentally, it’s based on the latest versions of WordPress and K2. There was then much designing and coding (HTML, CSS, and proper PHP) and the site was born. Some brief notes:

  • I wanted to give the site a proper and stylish design, so I used a grid. It doesn’t leap out at you because the design is simple, but almost everything is aligned to the grid.
  • The colour scheme is a bit of a change for me—in the past I have mostly used shades of blue, but the red goes well with the darker blue.
  • This is the first version of the site which is really usable and easy to navigate, particularly when it comes to my projects.
  • The logo is a stylised ae ligature, which itself comes from when I used to style the title as ‘mæstrosync’.

There are still a few rough edges that I’m working on, so ignore them for the time being.

Categories: Programming » PHP, Design & graphics » Web design and Projects » Web applications » www.maestrosync.com

I’m being biased against biased Southerners so it cancels out?

“Calendars have long been held as suspect in Lynchburg, Tennessee, just like suffrage for women and negroes.”

Categories: Humour and Incidentals