Leonard Weiss Blog

The Site

Check it out!
Thanks to the work of mostly myself, the new site design is now working! However, I must also thank southpaw (a.k.a Pawz) for the work that he did on the header image. Without his work it would be hardly as awesome as it is now. Also, the podcast pages are working (which took more work that I would have liked…) - the news page remains on TheRealN, which the other pages are all on my site because that’s simpler. Thanks once again to Kevin, who did some more work on adding comments. So, without further ado, the design!

CGSchool Comic

Thanks to FergoFrog, the comic now has a comments feature! You can check out the comics here, and feel free to post comments on the comics if you like them (or even if you don’t)! I’ll generally reply to comments, but you’ll need to check back to find out if I have - I figured an auto-message would get frustrating for anyone who comments. So anyway, check out the comics, post some comments, and enjoy!

WhatPulse

WhatPulse is a unique little program, which it quite fascinating at the same time. It counts the number of times you press keys, click your mouse, and records the distance that you move your mouse (I’m still wondering how exactly this works for laptops). For example, in the few days that I’ve had this I have accumulated about 240,000 key presses, 30,000 mouse clicks, and moved my mouse 2.1 miles (it counts in either miles or km, but only displays in miles on the site). It also shows your place against everyone else who has WhatPulse, which is amazing (I’m coming about 83,500th). If you think this sounds like a cool program - I certainly do - be sure to download WhatPulse, and comment once you have; perhaps we can form a team!

APOD + The Sky In Motion

Some wonderful APODs this past week or so. I really liked the Christmas picture, which was Fox Fur, a Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree. Then, the day after, there was The Elephant’s Trunk (in IC 1396). Soon after there was NGC 1569: Starburst in a Dwarf Irregular Galaxy. And, for New Years Eve, this video of the sky in motion. You can see many more video of the sky on motion at TheSkyInMotion.com - these are truly superb time lapse videos, which I think anyone who enjoys looking upwards will enjoy. They have photos of night or day, or often ones of both, as well as the Northern Lights and other things. I very highly recommend the site.

Anyway, that’s about all for this past week or so. I’ll have some photos of Narooma up once I sort through them and find the best ones. In the mean time, enjoy APOD, WhatPulse, my site, and the comics.

Lenny

Narooma

Currently, we’re on holidays in Narooma. We’re staying at the Ecotel, which is an absolutely wonderful place. In fact, all of Narooma is wonderful. It’s very green, picturesque, beautiful… I actually need to take some photos so I’ll have things to show off when I’m back. Got nothing for now, though - at least, nothing on my computer yet. I’ll be sure to have a few soon.

Fat Cat

OK, so I beat the game. I’m just a bit too keen when it comes to things like this. Here’s the ending screen, though shortly before this there was a message that said: “Congratulations, you have reached the inter-galactic picnic area!”. Funny, really, but only if you’ve played the game so it makes some sense.

Frost Bite 2

In other Nitrome news, they released a sequel to their original Frost Bite, which is called Frost Bite 2. Funnily enough, it’s not the sequel of another game which they made related to Frost Bite, which was called Thin Ice - a sort of Frost Bite 1.5, if you will, but a fairly different game entirely. The character is faster, there are new enemies, slope gravity is more realistic, and the grapple has a more finite length (somewhat unfortunately). Also you can’t grapple downwards, or rather under 180 degrees, which is also irritating. And there are bonus stages if you get all five letters (”BONUS”) in each level, as opposed to getting extra points.
But, knowing me… I finished it. Somewhat proudly, I must add, because I did it so quickly. Anyway, the ending shot looks a little like this:

CGSchool Comic

Thanks to the help of many friends, I’ve given this comic a proper comic site, and archive (as well as RSS feed, too)! I won’t say much on it, but if you haven’t checked it out, you really should. It’s not overly amazing I think, although many people I know have referred to it as amazing, wonderful, or one of the best comics they know. I think it’s abstract and weird, but hey, if people like it I’m not opposed to that. So, without further ado, please check it out here - feedback would be great too, mostly on the site layout but also the comics themselves.

Cyanide And Happiness

This comic is a lot like my one (in fact, the drawing style is based off theirs), but I find it equally as odd as mine. Still, there are often ones I like, and sometimes ones I really like. Here’s one of them:

APOD

After the largest full moon of the year, I couldn’t resist posting this wonderful photo of the Lick Observatory Moonrise, which was just four hours after perigee (which is when the moon reaches the closest point in its orbit to Earth). I also very much enjoyed the Sun Pillar Over North Carolina, the Analemma Over The Porch Of Maidens (an analemma is the path the sun makes over a year, shown in this picture - I actually marvel at how it looks like an infinity sign, and wonder if it’s just a coincidence). And also today’s picture of the Labtayt Sulci on Enceladus, which is Saturn’s icy moon.

So, some interesting, obscure, and strange stuff from me - hopefully as always.

Lenny

Another short yet hopefully enriching post.
I was thinking about what it meant to be amazing. I came about this thought via a strange train of thoughts which probably originated with the TV show “Heroes.

So, what is it to be amazing? It occurred to me that to be amazing, you have to be different. One-of-a-kind, unique, special… these are all the things that you would associate with something (or someone, for that matter) amazing.
Take some of the ancient wonders of the world, for example. Stonehenge, the pyramids, the Sphynx (I’m fairly sure that’s one - if not it should be), the Great Wall; or maybe you’re a more modern person , so for you it’s music, art, literature, or even that small statue in your garden that you could swear looks at you when you go outside (assuming you go outside, of course).
It doesn’t end there, though. Fire, gold, diamonds, smelting metals, electricity, the internet, landing on the moon and Mars, space, the universe (though I say this tentatively because while I would define it as amazing, it is possible that there is more than one); there’s just a whole bunch of stuff that was (and often still is) completely and utterly amazing the first time it’s done. You just have to keep your eyes out for them.

Well anyway, the point is that things happen every day, but sometimes they’re just not always quite as amazing as each other. So next time you do something, try and make it one-of-a-kind, unique… amazing.

Lenny

Holidays

Important school news, or rather lack of! Holidays have started!
So, what does that mean? 8 weeks to relax, compose, re-design the site, play games, and do a hundred other things.
Also, I’ve been given a Tablet as a present. It’s a small Bamboo one (made by Wacom, though if you look it up I’d recommend not looking at the Bamboo site because I find it horrible), and so I’ve started drawing my comics by hand now. Here’s the first tablet one:

Here’s some of the other things I’ve done so far these holidays:

Orchestra

I’ve been invited to play in a community orchestra, for their concert this Sunday. I’m playing the Russian Easter Festival Overture (by Rimsky-Korsakov), but there are another two or three pieces being performed as well (including a horn concerto by Mozart). So if you’re not doing anything this Sunday, why not head down to Albert Hall at 6pm for a concert! Tickets are $15 per adult, and children get in for free (if they come with an adult).

Fat Cat - Nitrome

Another Nitrome game, so close to the release of Toxic 2. This one is similar to an old flying arcade game, however your ship is an owl, and you’re protecting a cat that eats things (no, not cat food). The picture they use is here: however that’s not terribly brilliant. I’m up the to final boss (level 21/21), so after I’ve beaten it I’ll post some pictures… or at least the victory picture.

Twilight

I saw this today. I found it to be quite good, which is funny because I’d heard someone say it was bad (well, it’s not). It’s relationship-y enough for girls, and action-y enough for guys, so all together it’s an amazing film with beautiful effects, imagery (though I did wonder about the constant de-saturation), and plot. I highly encourage you all to see it.

APOD

For all of you who missed it, here’s the smile in the sky. I also really enjoyed their Portrait of NGC 281.

That’s all for now, I think. I’ll post more in a week or so before I go away.

Lenny

Big news: Nitrome released Toxic 2, after having two previews and things like that leading up to its release. So, I just had to beat it - not like I have much else to do at this time of year.

Toxic 2

If you are into games, I highly recommend checking out Toxic 2. It’s much faster than the original (in terms of moving speed - I don’t remember it being quite as fast as this), but definitely just as fun. There are now hidden levels, new enemies, better graphics, sound… and lasers! Errors or glitches fixed have mostly been fixed, and there are some new bombs. So, where to begin?
Well, this is the little character you control. There is one level where you actually need to duck, but it looks awesome to do it anyway.
Then, enemies. There are a few new enemies in this game. You meet the “Arachnobot” somewhere near the beginning, and I’m still not sure how to defeat the examtly… so just walk past when they go upwards.
There are the fun little proximity sensors that explore when you go near them (after beeping for a few seconds). They’re actually quite helpful… some of the time.
These guys are fun. They’re turrets that shoot bombs at you. Fortunately they’re highly inaccurate, and the bombs or you tend to move at some point anyway.
And, my personal favourite enemy, the bug dropper. Little bugs walk out of this thing periodically, and blow up if you walk into them. Luckily they’re destroyable, but it can be quite annoying if there are more than one of them close to each other.
Bombs? There were two new ones, as well as a noticeable change of the Digger (it can now go sideways as well). The first one acts as a ledge, but blows up after a short amount of time, leaving you stranded painfully in mid air.
And to combat those bug dropping enemies, you get little bug-bombs of your own. They explode when you want (all of them at once… it’s funny to have 20 or so in a line then detonate them), and can jump if you jump - easily their most useful feature. Plus, they can’t hurt you, unless they explode near you.
Oh, and there are these grids. You explode something in there and that explosion area will turn solid. Quite helpful, but also strange.

Onto the more fun stuff now. There are 10 or so hidden areas in this game, which allow you to access bombs before you figure out what they are, and often are quite challenging. You step on these blue teleportation devices to get there.
Then you get a little something like this… … and you go to the area - hooray!

And, of course, another big change in this game: bosses. The first boss is annoying, but not overly hard to beat. It just walks around most of the time, or jumps on you to make you feel its anger. The odd thing is the help device on that level says that this robot is its “mother”, however it says the same for the second boss.
That second boss looks something like this:   and is hard - unless you find the glitch. When it is exploding, before it repairs itself, you can throw another bomb into the wounded area. This will stay there when the machine heals, and blow another hole straight in.
So, you beat that boss, and that’s it: Game over!

APOD

Fun, fun, fun. For those who didn’t catch the so-called Smile on Dec 1, today’s APOD picture shows it (though it’s not a wonderful picture so I didn’t put it here). I personally went out to look, but it was too cloudy to make anything out.
In the past two or so weeks I have found four APODs that I really liked. The first was In the Vicinity of the Cone Nebula (a wonderful brown-coloured picture with the cone nebula in the bottom-left corner), the second The Horsehead Nebula in Orion (most of you would have seen this, but it really is spectacuar), the third Galaxies in the River (two galaxies practicing “galactic cannibalism”), and the fourth Massive Stars Resolved in the Carina Nebula, which I found the most brilliant and colourful. Enjoy!

Podcast

Just a brief note about the podcast. To my delight I discovered that it now goes for over an hour if you play everything from start to finish. For anyone wondering, no, I didn’t count it; iTunes shows the total running time of playlists and podcasts, but it was very interesting to find out. So, yeah; hooray!

Oh, and there’s just three days of school left. We’re watching films, all of them related to what we’re learning about, and it’s a lot of fun. Hopefully speech night will be almost as interesting… almost….

Lenny

Seeing Without Eyes, and Arhythmatic, my two compositions for music this semester, are now on the podcast! If you want to download the files you can download Seeing Without Eyes from here, and Arhythmatic from here.
If you want Seeing Without Lyrics, which sadly Sibelius won’t play, here they are:

Verse 1:
Walk into that space one day.
Suddenly, you see him there.
Then she leaves, without a word.
For some reason, you just stay.

Chorus:
Don’t know what you’re doing here.
Don’t know what you’ve got.
Don’t know what you’re doing there, oh no. You’re seeing without eyes.

Verse 2:
Suddenly he talks to you.
“It’s OK to go away.
Don’t return, or else,” he says.
Time to go quite far away.

Enjoy, and as per usual comments are always welcome!
Lenny

Three games in just under two weeks! Boy, I’m having a hard time completing them all. So, here’s a bit about them, while I try and complete two of the more difficult ones.

Numbskull

Nitrome’s Halloween game for this year is called Numbskull, which was also released with a new skin (a rather chilling purple background). Interesting it’s yet another puzzle game from Nitrome… but I’m sure they’ll get back to their action games soon, with the release of Toxic 2.
Anyway, in this game you control the map, essentially. You select a square made up of tiles, and then tiles will rotate, causing the small skull on the map to fall onto the skeleton and do a rather amusing dance.
There are some very tricky levels - some took me literally days to figure out. But in the end I managed to do it all.

Bomba

Bomba is essentially a remake of a mouse-mover game, in that you have to move the small creature with your mouse and avoid walls etc. However, there are some other twists in this game… for example, you can use bombs to blow up some enemies and walls. This is another puzzle game, which despite having 30 levels wasn’t actually too hard. So, I have managed to complete it: check the picture below to see the ending screen.

Flipside

Their newest game, Flipside, which must have only been added today or yesterday. It’s a driving game, though it has a sort of twist because you can drive without gravity having much effect sometimes, and spin in the air in your car (which looks a little something like this: . It’s a fun game, though I’ve found that some levels can be easy if the computers make mistakes - though the first is quite hard because you have no clue what to do. Also, this game is multi-player, which can give added fun if you enjoy annoying all of your friends.
When I started writing this post a day or two ago I was actually only on level 7 out of 15, but by now… well, enjoy the completion picture.

Music

I recently (very recently…) finished two pieces for music this semester. Many thanks to the few people who helped me with the piece, whether it be in the form of ideas, suggestions, or other things (or all of them). For anyone both interested and reading this, you can check out midi versions of the songs here: Seeing Without Eyes, and Arhythmatic. Enjoy, if you listen, and I hope to have them up on the podcast in a few days.

Exams

Well, we recent had lots of exams at our school. A few big end-of-year ones, and a few more to go. Overall I’m quite happy with my results. I got 71.5% for Science (just higher than what I was expecting), 62% for Maths (which I’m quite disappointed with, although our class average of 55% makes me feel slightly better), and so far for English I’ve got 21/25 (higher than I expected). We’re still to get the other part of English back, as well as our Geography “exam”.

APOD

A few APOD pictures that I thought were quite nice, from the past two or three weeks. There was: Massive Stars in Open Cluster Pismis 24, The North America Nebula, Haunting the Cepheus Flare, A Witch by Starlight, Spicules: Jets on the Sun, A Spectacular Rayed Crater on Mercury, and A Bubble in Cygnus.

Anyway, I think that’s just about all for now. I’ll put up other exams soon, probably, and podcast notes… etc.

Lenny

Just a short post for now, with no APOD or anything in it, because I want to try and get something across.

So, I was in a situation a few days ago, which really put my morals to the test. I’m not really going in to any details, so if that’s what you were looking for you won’t find any. Anyway, just about everyone has some sort of standards by which they live… y’know, like “I’ll never drink, I won’t smoke, I’ll never steal, do drugs…” and that sort of stuff.
Well, my point is that most of these are just thoughts, and so I wish to pose a question: what do you do if you actually have to make a choice? What do you really believe in?

Whatever the circumstance, I hope you make the right choice - I know I did.

Conveyance is a short film filmed and directed by Alex Jackson in 2008. It made the top three in the Canberra Short Film Festival in 2008. Starring Benoit McCullough, Edward Reeve, and Callum Dawson. The music was composed by Leonard Weiss in 2008.
It is 6:39 minutes long, but under 10mb (so unfortunately the quality isn’t brilliant). Distributed with permission of Alex Jackson.
If you want, you can download it manually from here.
Enjoy, and don’t hesitate to post comments either for Alex or myself!
Lenny

As this is centred around the Brisbane trip, I’ll start with that before diverging into other things. So, here goes a little photo journal of our trip (click on the photos for full-size images).

GO in Brisbane

When we got to Brisbane, at about 7am, we got some breakfast and then headed over to St Laurence’s College, where we did a short workshop of some of our pieces, followed by a workshop with internationally-renowned guitarist Karin Schaupp. We didn’t get much of a look at the school, but I did manage to snap a picture of their school emblem.
After that we headed over to Southbank for lunch. It was nice, but we didn’t have much to explore until Sunday (which is when I took this photo). Still, I’d recommend going there if you’re looking for food - there are several varieties of shops and foods to choose from.
One thing you can’t escape from in Southbank is purple. There are thousands of purple flowers, most of them lining the arches that are above the paths. The flowers looked a little something like this up close… , and the arch ways looked amazing:
Then we went back to St Laurence’s so we could do a concert for their school, and after that we played with a Frisbee for a bit while waiting for our bus to take us back to accommodation, which was the Brisbane Backpackers.
Saturday consisted of going to Dreamworld, and was definitely the highlight of the trip.
We performed just after 10am, which was unfortunate because that’s also when Dreamworld opens, meaning that there weren’t too many people watching us play.
However, a few people stopped to watch when, in the middle of the performance, we were able to get Spongebob to conduct a piece. This was the highlight of the concert because it was surprisingly funny, and also there were more people listening.
This prompted some interpretive dance (or just… dance) from Patrick, who was with Spongebob. This was one of the things that made him even more amusing.
Then, before we really had a chance to explore, we saw the most amazing lizard - and I like to pride myself somewhat on this photo.
While still with my camera out I got the best pun from one of the teachers there, who said “Look at the two Lens.” Honestly, best pun I heard on the whole trip. After the performance finished we then got stamps so we could come back in, put our stuff in the bus, and were free to roam around for about 6 hours.
Sadly, while at Dreamworld we didn’t go on the Tower Of Terror - however one of our group members did go on the Giant Grop.
We also saw some amazingly politically incorrect M&M posters, which I just had to take photos of.
After 6 hours we were all pretty tired, so we headed back to the Backpackers and got a good night of sleep.
Then, on Sunday, we did several things that I unfortunately didn’t get photos of. Firstly we performed at a retirement village, the name of which I didn’t catch, and wasn’t written down anywhere for us to see. It was lots of fun, though, and the people there seemed to really appreciate our playing.
Then to Southbank for lunch again, as well as a bit of free-for-all exploring. There were markets on at that day, which meant we had a lot to look at in a reasonably short amount of time.
When at Southbank one much remember to not feed the Ibis. Even the tables tell you not to!
I did manage to catch out though (or, at least a photo of one). They look something like this.
There was also a tightrope walker so good he didn’t need a rope!
Also, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually taken a photo of any palm trees during the whole trip, so I took some while we stopped to eat.
Then off to St James Cathedral, where we performed with other guitar ensembles. This was, I think, the best performance that we did on the whole trip, as we had all got to know our music exceedingly well.
After that it was pretty much straight onto a plane and back into Canberra, where I think we all got a lot of sleep for the week to come.
Conclusion: The school trip I’ve been on so far. The combination of awesome music, fun, and work make it lots of fun to be there, and not too stressful.

Cyanide And Happiness

I just have to share this with people. Cyanide And Happiness is a very funny comic (sometimes, other just strange), and here’s one that I found hilarious.

APOD

Not really much of an explanation needed for these. Most of the APODs this week have been really beautiful in one way or another, so here are the ones I liked:
Sharpless 171, In the Center of the Lagoon Nebula, Beautiful Spiral NGC 7331, Great Orion Nebulae, Amazing Comet Holmes, NGC 602 and Beyond.

So, that’s the trip in a nutshell, along with some extra fun stuff. Enjoy the photos, and on a different note I’ll be updating the podcast this week with Conveyance, so it gets a bit of viewing.

Lenny