"Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind."

I didn't do much with the game yesterday (tried to dispose of unseen background tiles...failed thus far). I was writing up a big ol' alternate proprietary license that I may or may not allow for those who want to distribute the game and don't care for the AGPL3 (it's less than half the length of the AGPL3, at least for now, but is more or less finished and incorporates some terms from it by reference), and reserved that planned name I talked about in the last post with notlong.

Question and answer authority.

I updated the game's FAQ, which (like the game) is unreleased and nowhere near ready for prime time. I also got the tiler to tile stuff, but I still need to evict unseen tiles from the document tree and to add tiles and non-tile decorations (rivers, contours, etc.) besides a default grass tile I wrote up in Notepad.

I think I am fairly close to revealing the name of the game. The currently planned name is an 8-letter word that returns no Google results, is easily pronounced like a pair of English words, will also be the name of the game's fictional world, and is not "Vralanea". First I may decide to claim it as a domain name; I'm not yet sure which top-level domains I'll use, or if I'll use more than one. I will almost certainly not use .com, even if the name is available there; I may use .net, .org, or (slightly more likely, because the US legal system has disturbed me lately) some non-US domain. I'm also pondering whether to solicit outside help to make a matching logo.

A witch-scholar who fights with the rolling fury of fire.

I got my game's engine to start making hitboxes. They don't (yet) generate collisions, nor do they expand to specific creature sizes or such.

However, I think the witch portrait that follows is much closer to finished, so if you're a professional artist or art critic, just close the browser window now if you don't wish to hate me forever. (A more serious fair warning: an even longer post than my penultimate, complete with headings even, but one that I think is very necessary to explain the portrait's roots and jot down some of my own life so I don't forget it, follows first.)

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The elements will soon call you to battle.

I am working on a shoot 'em up. I have been for quite some time, but after many years I finally have a reasonably concrete idea of how it will turn out.

Still, very little of it is ready. I can only show a portion of its FAQ page, and even that part will very likely change. If I'm lucky I'll finish it within the decade...

Show me the Honey.

Having already realized that “Skyscrapers Jihad” was a bad translation for the name for an anime episode that actually shows Honey in Hurricane form crashing a small airplane into a giant skyscrap—er, skyship, I was checking Cutie Honey's edit history, like any completely screwed-up, solitarynormal person would do, and noticed the Chinese Wikipedia's version was added. I checked the article and decided to use the Google's +5 Wand of Comprehension on it.

Now, I know it's in beta, and despite its aforementioned “Skyscrapers Jihad” oddness it is easily my favorite Web translator, but...“Jerry Maguire soldiers”??? What?

I'm not sure I want GOOG to correct that, though. I can easily imagine a hot animated girl willing to change into seven (or more) forms to defend the honor of Tom Cruise—weirder things happen in cartoons. Besides, for Jessica Calvello to say “Sometimes I'm a beautiful secretary. Sometimes I'm a warrior in gleaming white armor. And sometimes I'm the loudest fighter pilot on couches!” would probably create a brand-new genre of transgender comedy or something.

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 test.

This post was mostly written using the very beautiful-looking (if not quite perfect) second beta of Windows Live Writer, available for download.

I especially love the splash screen, editing in the blog's style, and the Web Preview (View->Web Preview or press F12).

Long story short: I'll be using it.

(Via the Blogger dashboard; screen shot taken with Kenny Kerr's very awesome Window Clippings program.)

...but we were invaded by evil life-forms.

I like DeeJyyIncompetent's mixes.

“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

Edit: Google Images (mentioned below) has returned to its old full-data layout, for me at least. Thank you, GOOG.

So I was wondering who the kinda-hot special guest judge on some singing-competition-type show I was watching was*, and instead of simply checking the official site I decided to use the Google. (Cyndi Lauper was the first name I thought of. I've no idea why either.)

NOT COOL.

I know that Google likes fiddling around with stuff to see what selected users like (2005 called, they want my comment back), but I don't like the idea of having to hover over a thumbnail to see what images are from dead sites** or dangerous sites (much worse)...or maybe I'm just lazy. The worst part: merely tabbing to the desired thumbnail won't reveal the size and location info.

This, on the other hand, is cool:

Apologies to Bill Bixby.

*By the way, if my eyes, this MSNBC story, and the great wiki that knows a lot if not quite all serve me right, it was Sager tonight.

**Google, please mark an image as "possibly dead" or something if the image comes up as "not found". I promise I won't sue you for using that idea. On the contrary, it would save you guys some bandwidth and lessen the need to scrounge up money from everyone and everything if things go downhill.

Dear eB_y users...

Stop putting your _x digital zoom digital cameras in the _x optical zoom categories. It pisses me off.

Sincerely,

gk

P.S. Please, eB_y, make your URLs decent. You know, readable, like those new "MyWorld" sites. Not like the search pages. Change those URLs between now and quickly.

P.P.S. The blanking is mine, not by Blogger or Google. If they did something like that, why I'd...I'd...make a ytmnd about it or something. No free lunch et cetera.

Google Trends.

New Google Labs Product, "See what the world is searching for."

Interesting findings there: Mexicans and Filipinos really like Lindsay Lohan.

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It's about time, Web guys.

The first W3C Recommendations in over a month.

All right, I'll do it too.

I'll admit it. I'm a stubborn defender of the things I like. Sometimes, though, technology is so good that it simply conquers its competition. With that in mind, I shall finally do my part to promote the best, and hopefully leave you feeling more confident as you browse the Web.

Try Firefox. You'll like it.