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  Nature Notes 03:19 PM -- Thu August 4, 2005  

Firstly, it poured rain and even hailed today. The world has gone mad.

Secondly, on our walk yesterday, we saw a tarantula crossing the road! It was huge, like 3 or 4 inches long, just moseying along all slow. That's our first non-zoo tarantula, and quite a sight it was. Just another fine reason to kick ourselves for not bringing our camera when we do walks.

Thirdly, each of our cats has a game they play. It's fun. Zazzy plays catch (sort of) - if you throw the correct type of water bottle cap (she only likes Crystal Geyser caps), she'll jump up to swat it out of the air, or catch it with both paws and grab it in her mouth, then smack it around some more. She gets upset if you stop throwing it though, she doesn't like to just play by herself.

Huzzah plays fetch just as well as any dog... if you're using the right toy. He'll only fetch these sparkly little fluffball cat toys we've got. We keep losing them since he loves to bat them around, especially under things. But he does it so well, running out there and bringing it back to you to throw again. That's my favorite. He came up with it himself, we never tried to do any training. He just realized that we'd throw it if he brought it to us.

Bonsai plays hide and seek! If you get his attention and then run away from him rapidly and hide somewhere, he'll come looking for you, and always finds you eventually. If he can't find you for a little while, he cries, but he keeps looking! It makes him really happy to find you, and he likes it when you run off to hide again. I tried to play it with him today, but he decided to chase at high speed instead, so I never actually got away from him.

And there's Ollie. He plays "chew up the paper", and "especially if it's important". He also enjoys "chew the wire" and "torment the big fat cat just by being near him". He's basically a monster. But I'm convinced that when he grows up a little, he'll have a game of his own he likes to play. Maybe it'll be Kid Mystic.

They're cats, so that qualifies as a nature note.
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  Geeks & Thanks 08:15 PM -- Wed August 3, 2005  

Here's the thing with geeks. A geek is someone who has no power. They're not physically strong, they're not famous or popular, they're not a success in intellectual pursuits (I'm speaking of a specific type of geek here, not just the general brand). So what do geeks do? They create their own world in which they do have power. This may be a comic book they draw, it may be RPGs that they play, it may be short stories. Or it may be a special private geek community they create with fellow geeks. Kind of a big "No Homers Club". This last is the most powerful, because now, the geeks actually hold power over other real people! If, for some odd reason, people want something that their little club provides, or wants in, they can deny them, and smugly feel mighty and splendid. The Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons is the archetype of this brand of geek.

I tell you the above only because I recently had the slightly frustrating experience of being rebuffed by such a secret geek club. It's only slightly frustrating, because I'm not missing out on much (just a listing on a certain website that very few people would ever have seen...), and I know that their little community is all they (they being specifically the guy who got my listing yoinked) have. So I can be smug too, suckas. Oh, and the frustration is also lessened simply because the validity of my listing was really right on the edge to begin with. It could've gone either way in fairness. I shall leave them to their private geekery however by not naming names or citing the situation in any further detail.

Oh, and boy do I like having my owning private geekdom to rule over here at Hamumu!! BOW DOWN BEFORE HIGH ELF KING HAMUMU AND HIS +3 BROADSWORD OF SMITING! It's especially appropriate because in desperation for something to read, I have just started in on the Dragonlance books, which my wife has had in her possession since she was young enough that they were appropriate and 'cool'.

Thank you to Drgamer for his efforts and work in regards to the geekery situation above, by the way, even though they were sadly futile. And thank you to Mr. Zee for his appreciation of the effort I put in to keep these games new and fun! It's a much more fun job when I know my work is being appreciated!
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  Sneak Peek: Super Happy Go Go Ninja Time 05:35 PM -- Tue August 2, 2005  


At long last, there are now Tony Hawk combos! It's fun! Those swirlies coming off the ninja are from performing the Atomic Drop, which is not in Ninja Academy (actually, I think it's in the Mac version, but with no special effects). It's a three-fold move: it drops you out of the sky straight down, which is good for controlling where you land, and it smashes all badguys within a radius, which is good for pummeling, and when it's over, you are walking the opposite direction, which is good for controlling which way you're moving! In the list of moves executed, "Beatdown" is not actually a move, it's just giving me credit for finishing off Training Dummies.

So lots of polishing of that combo system today, and it seems to work properly now. It's kind of tricky - as long as you remain in the air, your combo keeps going. As long as the last guy you hit has not recovered from being hit, your combo keeps going. And if you finish someone off, you have 1 second bonus time to get back into your combo before it ends. So as you can see, there's lots of things that keep a combo going, but in the frantic ninjitsu storm, it's still not easy to keep comboing!

There's also a new life meter in this shot (and that new font). I don't really like this life meter much better than the old, so I still need to come up with something new.
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  Flash Flood! 10:05 PM -- Sun July 31, 2005  

Whoa. We went away for the day, came back and everything looked just like before, warm and sunny and clear. Until we got to our road (note: our road is aptly named "Dusty Road"), and discovered that apparently it had rained while we were gone. HARD. The entire road was rutted and trashed by an obvious flood of some size. Not like a real flood or anything, nobody's house or cars had moved, but the road is sure in bad shape now! So is our yard. Well, not bad shape, but it's covered with ruts. Crazy. I wish we hadn't missed that storm, it must've been something. Quite a shock to come home to that. I don't know what is going on this summer, it's like living in the tropics during monsoon season.

The indie (or semi-indie?) game Fate is really fun. Of course, that's only because it's an exact clone of Diablo 2 (and the parts where it strays from Diablo are the weakest parts... come on people, we need a multi-layered skill tree, so that there are choices to be made!). But it is very cool, to be sure.
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  Buy Stuff 04:57 PM -- Sat July 30, 2005  

You know what I want to buy? An uninterruptable power supply. We keep having these teeny blackouts, maybe 1 second long. A couple a day! It's really a pain. Apparently they happen any time there is lightning anywhere within a 400 mile radius. Speaking of that, what's up with this weather? Rain and lightning in the middle of summer? Heck, rain!? At all!?! It's crazy talk. It's kinda nice except for the power troubles.

Here is my latest invention: the air replacer. It's like a gigantic fan at one end of your house, and another at the other end, and probably an assortment of smaller fans strategically arranged throughout. In the late afternoon, once it's cooled off outside and it's time to open windows and let the air in, you put away all loose papers, and kick on your air replacer. In under 30 seconds, it will have completely replaced all the air inside your house with air from outside. Shut it off, and enjoy the outside air, inside! Use it anytime you want this effect - burn something in the kitchen? Problem solved! Flies in the house? Usher them outside with great haste! Yes, the air replacer meets all your air needs. Unless you need air that's cooler or warmer than what's outside, in which case, turn on your A/C or heater.
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  Fan Art 05:16 PM -- Thu July 28, 2005  

Today, a Hamumu fan who you may know by the name of WackieWatty sent me some art of Yerfdog he's made. Here are my favorites (he made a bunch!):


A clay yerfdog.

It says right on it what it is! And what it's in!


I love getting that stuff. It's weird to think of people being so interested in the junk I make up. Good for the ego! But kind of trippy strange. Now if only more people would be interested and I could get rich...

Sad nature notes: it turns out we have mice around here. We found out because after all the rain, a bucket we had outside was filled with water, and today we discovered two dead mice and a dead lizard floating in it. Sad... we gotta be more careful about leaving stuff out to accumulate water. The other nature note was our second scorpion: we saw him on our walk, way far from our house, just sitting in the road. He was much bigger than the one in our garage. Not very scary anyway though. Just fun to see. Still have yet to see a single snake, except the dead little one we saw early on. I want to see snakes, I just don't want them to be rattlesnakes. Or spitting cobras, but I think we're in the clear on that one. Or, while I'm on the topic, robosnakes with laser-guided missile bays. Again, rather unlikely though.

I made the new cartoonified version of the Training Dummy for Ninja yesterday. It's much nicer - not only is it cartoony to match the new look of the game, but it also bends back like rubber when you hit it, which is a cool effect. And I added some very cool particle effects when you collect the moonshine. Today I worked on some of the interface stuff, text and life meters and all, but it is not yet ready.

Hey, get those Monthly Merge guesses in!! Tomorrow is your last chance to win fabulous prizes! (until next month)
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  Walkies 09:29 PM -- Tue July 26, 2005  

Whew, gigantic walk this morning, a couple miles. So is that what it's like for people who really get exercise? Because it's not too bad (except the parts where we attempted jogging). And we found a rubber dolphin in the road!

For a few days we had major serious thunderstorms and crazy humidity. Another chance for me to see what life is like for others - in this case, midwesterners! The thunderstorms were fun, although the biggest raging one was during the middle of the night, and it was rather on the loud and bright side, interfering with the snooze time. Still, always fun. It started a fire actually, not too far off, but it was gone in a little while. Fire is a big danger 'round these parts, this time of year.

So, call that the nature note for today, because nothing new in the animal kingdom. Well, a bunch of neighbor dogs who bark at us whenever we go walking, but they're not terribly exotic.

So, boring journal then. Sorry! It's what you get today, since nothing happened. But on Thursday, we're going to Magic Mountain for our anniversary! Whee!
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  Sneak Peek: Super Happy Go Go Ninja Time 09:15 PM -- Tue July 26, 2005  


Here's the first shot that's remotely like what the final game will look like. The text and the life meter have to go, of course, and there will be more interesting stuff on the screen (like some enemies might be nice), but otherwise this is it! Oh, and you wouldn't normally get the "P1" pointer unless you're in a multiplayer mode, although it certainly is handy for showing you where the guy is in this shrunken down shot. Look, there are dancing moonshine bottles now! And they're apparently radioactive. And the ninja is now in white. I think he really looks good in-game now. In fact, it was only today that you could actually PLAY the game again, for the first time in weeks. That sounds like progress to me.
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  Comfy Pumpkins 05:58 PM -- Mon July 25, 2005  

Check them out:

Hand-stitched by Sol Hunt herself! A little small for general use, but they sure look nice!
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  So 07:12 PM -- Sat July 23, 2005  

My latest "get stuff done quick" scheme (dating back several weeks) revolves around earning poker chips for various accomplishments on the ninja game. I can then spend these chips to play computer games or read websites. The exchange rate is frankly quite agonizing, but it's working. Or at least, in the sense that I'm not playing any games or reading any websites it is. It's not working in the sense that I'm not getting anything done. Ah, but I'm getting tidbits done... you saw the stuff in Sneak Peek. I like that stuff, it's looking pretty cool. And today I did a little stuff in the code. Anyway, I also earn a chip for each journal entry or sneak peek I do, so that encourages me. And voila, I have now earned a chip! Best of all, tomorrow is Sunday, when I get to play for FREEEEeeeeeee! Oh the playing I will do.

Took trash to the dump today. That's part of country living - you haul your own trash to the dump. It was gross. We built a compost heap recently, but this trash was started prior to that, and thus contained some grossness, which resulted in liquid in the can. Trash liquid is a gross substance.

Earthlink watch: still have not received the promised refund. Inching ever closer to the day I can contest the charge with the credit card company! Would prefer they'd actually refund it though. Once this is finally handled, I'm getting a new, much cheaper, ISP. Maybe even one that won't be PUREST EVIL.
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