Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler

Happy Hogmanay!

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— orudge @ 31/12/2004 11:24 pm

Quick blog tonight… Planet Age of Mythology has a load more information on Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery (official title), and it’s looking good. 🙂 OSPlus Text Editor 2.1 should be out tomorrow. TTDAlter 4.3 will be out sometime in 2005. And that, my friends, is that. Have a happy new year. 🙂

Happy Almost-Almost New Year!

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— orudge @ 30/12/2004 10:57 pm

Happy December 30th everyone. Today is the day the new Apple Store launched. Check it out, it’s full of interesting and innovative new products. 🙂

Ensemble Studios is about to announce Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery (or so the title is rumoured to be) – today they had a teaser image from Age of Kings. They’ve had all sorts of teasers dating back from Roman times to 1995 (ES founded), 1997 (AoE), 1998 (RoR), 1999 (AoK). The Conquerors will presumably be the next, then possibly AoM/The Titans, and likely enough: 2005: Age of Discovery. We will see. Keep an eye out on Planet Age of Mythology if you’re interested.

I had something else I wanted to say, but I’ve forgotten what it is. Good night.

Anyone want a fairly new Firewire PCMCIA card?

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— orudge @ 29/12/2004 3:52 pm

Clickity-click. Grab a bargain, only 99p at the moment. 🙂

Yay, USB2/Firewire card arrived

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— orudge @ 11:49 am

Well, after the Christmas period and 20 days after it was originally ordered, my USB2/Firewire card I ordered from eBay (it was located in Hong Kong, of course) finally arrived. Hopefully my MP3 player should be waiting at the hostel for me, too.

Hmm, had a monthly lifeguard training session last night, was kind of fun. What else? Not a great deal to talk about. My Win32

We wish you a merry Boxing Day!

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— orudge @ 26/12/2004 11:01 pm

And another festive day over… I’m quite chuffed as I got the OS/2 port of OpenTTD working pretty much perfectly today – multiplayer, file selector, the lot. Expect to see a new version whisking its way to SourceForge very soon.

As for other business… well, it’s been quite quiet. Night all.

Merry Christmas!

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— orudge @ 25/12/2004 11:11 pm

Friends and colleagues,

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all…and a financially successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Britain great (not to imply that Britain is necessarily greater than any other country or area of choice, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual orientation of the wisher).

This wish is limited to the customary and usual good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first. “Holiday” is not intended to, nor shall it be considered, limited to the usual Judeo-Christian celebrations or observances, or to such activities of any organized or ad hoc religious community, group, individual, or belief (or lack thereof).

Yours,

Owen

Note: By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all. This greeting is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. This greeting implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for the wisher her/himself or others, or responsibility for the consequences which may arise from the implementation or non-implementation of same. This greeting is void where prohibited by law.

Yes, well, Merry Christmas anyway. Hope you had a good day. I didn’t have too bad a day, actually. Got money and chocolate this year, which is fine enough. 😉

Watched The Snowman again today – as I do every year. Brought a bit of a tear to my eye as I thought about my lost childhood… *sigh* At times, I feel old, even though the best/worst/whatever is still to come…

Also watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone tonight, which I hadn’t seen since December 2001 when I saw it at the cinema – it introduced me to the Harry Potter series of books and films. Before then, my brother had read all the books and so on, but I thought it was just some kiddie rubbish… then I saw the film, and it made me want to read the books. So I did. And the rest as they say were history. Until I saw “Fellowship of the Ring”, of course… I then read those books, and saw those movies, and argued with Ken as to whether it’s one book or three, and whatnot. Yes.

Anyway, got some stuff to do just now, so I’ll just wish you a safe after-Christmas and a happy new year!

“Down in the workshop, all the elves were making toys”

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— orudge @ 24/12/2004 10:39 pm

Merry Christmas Eve everyone. How are you today? I’m not so bad.

The proper, non-animated Mr Bean was back on tonight… classic – it was the one involving the turkey. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. 😉 There are two more Mr Beans on this Christmas… looking forward to them!

I ended up spending much of today playing OpenTTD multiplayer over the Internet. It really is quite addictive.

Anyway, ta ta for now.

Bizarre

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— orudge @ 23/12/2004 9:03 pm

Must just link to this image that Ken made…

I find the “mouth” particularly disturbing… 😉

The Movie Clichés List

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— orudge @ 22/12/2004 11:54 pm

Came across this site just now while looking for the lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s song “The Elements”: The The Movie Clichés List. While I’ve seen some of them before (eg, the Computing ones), it really is so true…

“Dear Santa, I wrote to you but you still ain’t callin’, …

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— orudge @ 10:36 pm

… Christmas is just around the corner and snow is fallin'”

Finally, it’s the Christmas holidays. Took long enough, eh? It being the last day today meant there were end of term activities… I’m on the Activities Committee this year, so I was partially responsible for setting up the Computer Challenge in the morning. I went to Battle of the Bands in the afternoon though, which was very good. Tug (Richard)’s band was rather, um, interesting, and delivered a great performance. But it was Via Tomorrow who won, also with an excellent performance – when Rory gets up on stage, he is quite something. Tom’s site (Tom being one of the members of the band) has a bit more on their victory. 😉

So… holidays. What to do? Well, on my computer-related todo list:

• OpenTTD for OS/2: get it working a bit better
• TTDAlter – get version 4.3 finished and out
• Hmm… other stuff which I can’t actually remember right now

On my non-computery-todo list:

• Tidy room! It needs it.
• Relax
• Get through all the ROTK commentaries
• Eat
• Unwrap presents
• Eat presents
• Watch TV
• Go to yon Entertainment Evening. That reminds me, must practice a magic trick for it…
• Lifeguard training at some point
• Likely other stuff too

(notice how I put everything on a new line, making the thing look much bigger? :))

And, on that note, I will sign off.

Grrr, postal service!

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— orudge @ 21/12/2004 5:47 pm

Hmm, ordered some stuff from Hong Kong a bit over a week ago, it’s still not arrived yet. Some of it was ordered to home but some of it to the hostel, and the stuff to the hostel isn’t here, which is annoying as we break up tomorrow, and if it doesn’t arrive tomorrow, then I won’t get it until January 10th – if it arrives tomorrow.

Oh well, last day of term tomorrow, at least. 🙂

Last week of term!

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— orudge @ 20/12/2004 5:47 pm

It’s the last week of term, at long last, and a third of it has already gone! It was an interesting day, actually… we were watching a DVD in biology about Jersey Zoo, very interesting in fact. Then we had to do a load of questions in History – nothing new there, then, but in English we were just reading. There were only two of us in French, and then I had a free period, during which I was invited to a party in the Advanced Higher Maths class, which ended up involving karaoke. Ahem.

Probably going to see “Birth” tonight at the cinema. Until then, toodle pip!

Comments

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— orudge @ 19/12/2004 2:51 am

Proper comments (ie, non-spam comments) should now not need moderation by me to appear, unless you use a bad word (eg, “poker”) or have excessive URLs in it. I’ve also installed a more intelligent spam filter… whether it’ll work or not, we’ll see, I guess.

Good night, moon.

It’s really gr-owen on me

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— orudge @ 18/12/2004 8:22 pm

This annoying thing is one of those irritating yet addictive Flash things that one can find scattered across the Interweb. Credits to Ken for the title of this post, which owes itself to a long bus trip from Inverness to Scrabster one wet Wednesday morning. It also provided a variety of other things, such as “Rudge, you Creally got me Owen”, and more. (You have to know that my name is Owen Creal Rudge to get this, I guess). It’s amazing how many songs you can stick the words “Owen”, “Creal” and/or “Rudge” into… 😉

Who loves the chocolate? Everyone loves the chocolate! Nobody hates the chocolate, because everyone loves the chocolate!

Not long until holidays now! I did fairly well at getting OpenTTD working under OS/2 today. I downloaded Open Watcom 1.3 last night, which works much better for compiling OpenTTD due to some changes made since 1.2. I got it to build, and to a point, it works. It crashes almost immediately, but it does work. The dedicated server also works to a point… it gives an error 4 from recv() when it tries to receive a connection, but apart from that, it’s not so bad – it advertises itself via UDP on a LAN, for example.

Nobody hates the chocolate, cause everyone loves the chocolate!

Have fun.

Funny LOTR stuff

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— orudge @ 12:25 am

Was just watching one of the DVD commentaries for ROTK, and for some reason I ended up typing “Smeagol wouldn’t hurt a fly” into Google. From there, I discovered a whole load of funny sites, including this one. If you’re even vaguely interested in LOTR, read it, it’s really rather funny in places. I’m quite interested in Star Wars, so I found this one where LOTR and SW are mixed rather entertaining. This fake press release was also quite amusing, as was this extra-extended DVD preview – including such deleted scenes as “The Silmarillion”!

Fun stuff indeed. 🙂

Oh, for anyone interested, I did manage to get my Specialist Study finished for yesterday. The maximum number of words was meant to be 4,500… I somehow ended up writing 5,275 words, but it can be cut down in future versions. We’ll see how it goes. 😉

Hmm

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— orudge @ 17/12/2004 10:21 pm

Hmm, it appears someone knows something I know someone would end up knowing but didn’t know if they knew it or not. Yes, that makes sense.

Oh well, I’m currently working on trying to build OpenTTD on OS/2, mainly for fun. Think I might temporarily give up and go to bed (after watching a bit of an ROTK commentary) soon, though.

Have a proper crimbo.

Rain!

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— orudge @ 16/12/2004 3:59 pm

It’s Thursday afternoon, and that means it’s practically pitch black and raining! Every Thursday, I sit in French, look out of the window, and it’s dark and rainy. Claudia usually then comments on the rain, and it’s all very depressing. 🙁

Tonight’s task: finish my English Specialist Study, to be handed in tomorrow. How this task will go, we will see.

This time next week I’ll be on holiday (as in school holidays, not on holiday away somewhere). 🙂 Roll on next Wednesday!

Aroond’n’Aboot launch

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— orudge @ 15/12/2004 10:18 pm

Well, the launch of Aroond’n’Aboot went well. I was the general technician of the whole thing, so was responsible for the projector and also for filming the event. I think I did a reasonable job of both, and the event itself went quite well. I think this is the longest time I’ve ever spent in a school in a single day – from 8.30am to around 9pm, minus an hour for dinner. Anyway, I have to go and do some work now… adios!

Christmas presents!

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— orudge @ 11:52 am

I’ve not got any Christmas presents yet… hmm, strange that. Online (eg, donations) or offline, any are appreciated. Oh well, maybe later. In biology though, so best go, eh?

Proper Crimbo!

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— orudge @ 14/12/2004 7:25 pm

We just had Christmas dinner today in the hostel… was quite fun! Slightly scary at times, but generally fun. Decided to skip swimming tonight, thought it might not be too wise today!

We have the Aroond’n’Aboot launch night tomorrow. We basically have to stay all day at school until around 8pm or later (when I’d usually leave at about 1pm after lunch, free period last period, and it’s a short day because of a Wednesday) – we need to have the games finished tomorrow. I also have to knock up a PowerPoint presentation tonight, and also get the profiles thing for the web site finished. It looks like I have responsibility for filming this event tomorrow night. It might be fun – the game itself isn’t actually that unfun – we’ll see. Hmm, also have to finish my Specialist Study – done some 3,000 words, have 1,500 more to go. Have until Friday now though, instead of Thursday.

Ken told me about some site today with some weird quotes on, such as “Elvis is making a comeback… he’s already come three feet” (or words to that effect, might have misquoted them). This was then followed by generally lame jokes about Lord of the Rings, bees (what’s twelve inches long and buzzes? A very long bee. Kudos to Tombe on the forums for that one) and other interesting things. Can’t actually remember the site it’s on though, I wrote it down so will look at it at some point.

The ROTK: EE DVDs are very good, not got through all the extended stuff yet, but what I’ve seen so far I’ve liked. Very interesting, also quite sad at “the passing of an era” (well, the end of the LOTR films, anyway. Roll on “The Hobbit”!)

Hmm, I notice Zernebok still rules supreme. Or the Supreme Ruler still rules Zernebok. Something like that. Talking about Zernebok, how does “Zernebok, Inc.” sound as a company name? You never know… it could happen.

Well, that’s quite a long blog for today, yesterday and so on. Merry Christmas all, and don’t eat too much pie. Or spam. Unless you’re listening to a certain Weird Al song…

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