VoodooLabs

This is really just a test to see if an image looks good in this blog… if it does I will try to use them more often.

This is my desktop for all those who are interested. Here is where I start off the day. Notable features are Menu Meters, Desktop Manager and Photo Desktop (not currently enabled).

Edit: Another desktop from a random game

Here’s something interesting to do this month:

It’s Movember, the month of the moustache! Ever wondered what life would be like with a wicked mo? Let the facial hair grow free!

Tom - I reckon you could grow a pretty wicked mo. You, Alex and Karl should give it a try!

MOVEMBER

Good luck with the exams!

“deus ex machina”

Literally, “god from the machine” or “god out of a machine”.

deus ex machina

1. In Greek and Roman drama, a god lowered by stage machinery to resolve a plot or extricate the protagonist from a difficult situation.
2. An unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot.
3. A person or event that provides a sudden and unexpected solution to a difficulty.

In game design this is one of the things designers want to do, but without the player noticing.

A small example of this is Cortana saying things like “there looks like some sort of transport vehicle in the centre of this tower cluster, lets check it out” when you leave the game for an extended period of time. The game designer wants the player to continue with the game and not get stuck or go off on a tangent.

Just to counteract the drooling rabid madness that is Alex’s animalistic desire to get a mac, I’m going to talk about my sad PowerBook.

It’s old, and I’ve accepted that. I realise that it’s not going to be as fast as the latest offerings from our white-like-the-master-race gods, but that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that my friend (who recently celebrated his 21st w00t) bought a G3 iBook off trademe. It’s faster. In photoshop the brush doesn’t jump around and play catchup with the cursor. Animation is smooth instead of kanking every three seconds. It’s the small things, but when you are using your computer a lot, small things matter. I went to a LAN and nearly didn’t win due to the choppyish performance of Quake 3.

In short, I think Tiger doesn’t like my computer. The problem is that I enjoy too many of the features of said OS X version and I don’t think I can live without them.

It’s probably something simple, like all the crazy stuff that I have done to the ‘book and I should spend some time problem solving. Well holidays are coming up and if I’m unfortunate (fortunate?) to not get a job I’ll have some time then.

EXAM TOMORROW!

As I was ranting in my previous post about having to make do with Windows until I can get my hands on a Powerbook (even an iBook would be acceptable methinks!). Anyway, I’ve made myself a program similar to the Application Launcher plug-in to QuickSilver so I can launch applications using a key combination and by typing in a keyword/tag. It’s tentatively called “FrozenMercury” and was written in VB due to the ease of design of weird GUI’s like this needed and the fact that I know how to write a VB program in no time flat.

Anyway, it’s in about Alpha stage, it works for me, but it missing a few things and I’m not sure if it will run on anyone else’s computer. I plan to make the binaries freely available once I get a little bit of time to tidy it up.