Leonard Weiss Blog

Ice Breaker (Gathering) Complete

Well, it took a month of waiting, mixed with about 2 eager hours of frantic playing, but here we are: the end of the third Ice Breaker game!
The only real thing of note is the last few levels, almost all of which involve these interesting stone platforms to the right. You click on them to place a bolt in them (seem familiar?) - as you can see, a very large number can be placed for unneeded stability - and click on them again to remove it.
The very last level actually had me wondering for about 10 minutes, but all you need to do is make a hook out of it and you’re done. Takes about 8 seconds if you know what to do. Once that’s done, you get a friendly completion screen!

I would have posted pictures of each of the clans and so on, but this picture does it even better than I could with several poorly-aligned ones, so enjoy!

APOD(OM)

APOD is also of some note, seeing as I haven’t mentioned it in two months. I really liked the following: Dust Sculptures in the Rosette Nebula, The Colors of IC 1795, Crescent Neptune and Triton from a serene point of view, Planetary Systems forming in Orion, Star Cluster R136, Aurora Shimmer and Meteor Flash, Hubble Remix (non-techno version…), Barred Spiral Galaxy, and the Blue Moon Eclipse.
For anyone who doesn’t know, a blue moon is the second moon that occurs in one month (obvious not running on the lunar calendar). These happen roughly every 2.5 years, if I recall. They’re usually not coloured blue, but are the cause of the expression “Once in a blue moon.”

Site + Podcast

Some minor site changes have occurred, focused around music and the podcast. You can now find a few performances of mine, as well as my old Flash Piano from a few years ago. The podcast is also fully working again, and now includes links to the RSS built into the page, so it can be easily subscribed to with Google Reader or similar RSS Feed subscribers. Check out the Podcast page for more information, and ways to subscribe.

I think that’s all for now. I may post more later these holidays on amusing school quotes, abstract thoughts, or that kind of stuff. You’ll just have to wait and see….

Lenny

I’ve put off talking about the new Nitrome games for about two weeks. Why? I’m not entirely sure. But in the mean time I’ve found some other great games which I’ll talk about first.

Wake Up The Box

Wake Up The Box is a cute little physics game, where you have to place objects to move a little box enough to wake it up. Overall it’s not too hard, but it’s quite a lot of fun to play.

The Company Of Myself

Another simply amazing physics game, The Company Of Myself, was another game that I felt the need to draw specific attention to. The plot is incredible, and the music touching - not to mention it actually being a very good game in terms of physics and playability. I highly recommend playing it if you’ve got time (and come on, you do; it’s the holidays, after all).

Cold Storage

Cold Storage is probably the main reason I’ve been putting writing this off. It wasn’t too hard - in fact, it was quite easy. I just didn’t like it. Not really much… at all.
You play as this friendly character to the right, and you swing on poles (very slowly, I might add). There are a few types of poles: Ice pole, rust pole, super-pole, and hince pole. These are all fairly self-explanatory - if not, just go and play the thing.
There aren’t many enemies, either. This flying bug, which will hurt you, this pole bug which will hurt you, a falling… thing, which will hurt you (come on, all enemies hurt you), the strange spikes. You’ll also find rings which will speed you up. Handy.
To gain extra points, you’ve got to hit and thus unfreeze these cute enemies to the left. They also come in a big size. You can also find lots of creatures stuck in the ice: fish, different fish, octopus, and even hands (too hard to screenshot though). And that’s really all there is to the game. Play it if you’re reeeeally got nothing else to do… it wasn’t that great.

Ice Breaker: The Gathering

Ice breaker is back in this new game. It’s mostly the same as the old one, except in this you get to use bombs. Hoorah. Later, you also encounter objects that move along poles, which I guess is kind of exciting, but not really that unexpected.
It’s also notable to mention two things: this video icon which has some incomprehensible meaning, and the fact that they’re releasing 8 levels every week. See, if I wanted to play a little bit of a game at a time, I’d do that. But when I expect a game… I expect a game. It’s a self-stating argument. It would be like getting to Windows 7 by upgrading DOS one step at a time. And that’s not even possible anyway. Point is that I find them releasing the game bit by bit horribly irritating. Much more so than B. C. Bow Contest, because in this there’s not a whole lot of stuff to start with. More to come in a month when it’s all out.

Avalance

Avalance just came out today. You play as a small penguin who goes along on a toboggan and avoids the avalanche that is right behind him. Kind of creepy, really. And very similar to some of their previous games… but don’t let that bother you.
Thus far I’ve encountered boost rockets, as well as enemies and food, but they’re pretty simplistic. I also found it strange that when you complete a level, you see the penguin’s family get crushed by the avalanche. But maybe that’s just me, right? Who knows. More to come when I play it for a little bit longer.

Site Stuff

Hosting issues with the podcast have been resolved, however the domain has been changed. A new podcast will be released as soon as possible, though unfortunately it will need to be subscribed to again (separately) via iTunes or a similar program.

Misc. Funnies

Google has released some videos to go along with mail. Or, should I said, Maill. Yes, because that’s how it’s spelt. You’d think that with so many people working at the company, the person who published sites would have a decently spell-checked page. But apparently not.

That’s all for now, as far as I know. More to come soon to do with APOD (woo!), the podcast, and games.

Lenny

B.C. Bow Contest - Fire Cup

I really think that the Fire Cup was actually easier than some of the other cups in B.C. Bow Contest. The first level is fairly difficult to get used to, but after you realise that the things that make the others ones easy to cheat at still apply (using the really point-worthy arrow followed by bombs, or measuring your shots with miscellaneous things on the side of the screen) you’ll find that this is really just simplicity with an extra add-on.

However, that being said, there’s actually a bit of new stuff. This picture over on the right shows the vague orange-red glow that is highly prominent in the fire cup. The lava will burn arrows if they hit it, and the redish glow will make all arrows go higher into the air (fun for creating sine waves!). Quite easy to get used to though.

Also, in a few of the rounds there is an erupting volcano, which will go off at regular intervals (Old Faithful, you see). But as long as you fire before that, you’ll be fine.

Oh, and in one round is this cool dinosaur. He will roar, and - surprise - the target in his mouth. Position your mouse around the O in “Bow Cup” over on the left, and you’ll get 100 points every time.
Other stuff… I finally managed to get a draw for the first time while playing this game. Turns out that you actually go through instead of failing the cup, which is great.

Also, you get to use this cool Dino character after beating the medium level. He’s coooool! But that’s seriously all to this new thing. Just beat it and wait for the Tar Cup to come out in the near future.

APOD

Really quite spectacular in these past few weeks. Started off with a golden shot of Scorpius star clusters, merging galaxies, Saturn side-on (wow!), Galactic Centres, an artistic shot of the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud, The Rung Ring Nebula (which I’m sure has been posted before…), another galactic centre, an angular galaxy shot, the FireFox logo a galaxy, A Crescent Earth (quite spectacular, really), a wonderful panorama of our Milky Way Galaxy, and another galaxy.

And that’s all, really. Check out the APOD stuff, perhaps play a game if you’ve got eons of free time… and more to come soon on some lightweight Linux distros, to prove the point that Chrome OS is actually useful.

Lenny

For the first time in a while I’m not even going to mention APOD, Nitrome, or my obsession with music. This is purely about the OS, so lets get going.

First things first
The very first thing you will need to do is download the operating system, and a virtual machine to run it on. The guys at gdgt have compiled Google’s source code into an easily run-able file, which you can download from their page here. You’ll also need a program to run Virtual Machines - I used VirtualBox when I did it, but VMWare Player should be fine too.
After you’ve downloaded and installed your program, and extracted the OS, you’re ready to actually install.

Now, I could spend some time explaining how to actually install it, but it’s much easier if you check out the tutorial over at Redmond Pie, because they explain it very well. They’re doing it on Windows 7, however I did it on XP and it was fine. As long as you’re using a virtual machine it should work well on just about any system.
Now, to what the operating system is actually like.

Starting up Chrome OS
As soon as you first open up Chrome, you should get something like this:

This is the login screen. Wow, that came up in what… 2 seconds? None of this “Stating your operating system, please come back in 2 minutes” junk that you get from most new ones. Sure, it’s a small OS, but I’ve used tiny Linux ones which still take far longer to initialise. Anyway, two bad things about this: Firstly, I couldn’t use the mouse on this screen, which seemed pointless (though it could be just me); and the second is that you need to log in with your Google Account. This irritates me, because although it’s aimed at people who only want to use the internet, there’s a fair portion of time when these people won’t actually be online. To be fair, I completely disconnected my computer from the internet and tried to log in and it let me, but I suspect that this is because it had already encountered my username and password before.

Oh, look, it’s logging on. Cool, nothing here… just a little bit bland, but it’s nice to not have a messy user interface for once.

What you see and what you get
When Chrome logs in (which also only takes a few seconds), you will end up with something like this:

Looks pretty similar to their browser, right? Except for just a few things - the logo, colour scheme, and stuff up in the right. Let me explain what all of these are.

The tabs… pretty simple - just keep them open! Currently, if you close them all, you’ll end up with something like this, and then the browser will instantly reopen. Fun to play with, but impractical.

Date and time… pretty simple stuff, again. You can change this all in the options, although I couldn’t get it to display my actual time even when I went to the right time zone.

Just so happens I was using a laptop, so I get this handy battery icon. I’m not sure what happens if you’re not using a computer with a battery, but the problem wouldn’t normally arise as this is only intended for netbooks and other cheap devices.

Pretty standard monitor of connections here. My computer only supports WiFi (currently off, as you can see), and forced-cable plug. Presumably it’s possible to also use Bluetooth, or Infared, but I can’t check on my machine.

Big long options screen. New tabs and windows are simple enough, except window management could be a pain. In fact, all of this is your regular browser stuff, especially if you already use Chrome. The only main difference is their options area, which contains a horribly dull greyish colour with some options that vary slightly beyond normal browser capabilities, but not very far.

The Really Good Feature
So, you’re probably thinking “Wait, isn’t this all pretty much identical to my current browser?” Well, yes, it is, just about. Except for this one thing: the logo tab. That’s right, their funny-coloured logo is now also a tab. Clicking on it results in this:

Of course, this is almost like a fancy way to bookmark pages. It’s all online stuff, and most of it I already use. Except, there are a few fancy things.

This shows what happens when I tried to open Calculator and Notepad. Pretty cool… but non-functional. This is probably my machine, though; all of the others that I clicked worked fine. However, this did lead me to try something, just to see what happens, which leads me to…

The Biggest Disappointment
This is an operating system. Sure, it’s aimed at people using the internet, but what if they’re not? Say you get disconnected for a day or two, or you’re travelling and can’t access the internet, or you’re just over at a friend’s place and they don’t have WiFi (and the neighbours were clever enough to protect theirs). The big thing is that without internet, this doesn’t currently work. Now, this is actually what I suspected, but take a look:

Yes, this is their default access-applications screen. And it’s not working. Why? Because I’m not online. And that’s just bad. Sure, to talk to people you need to be online, or to check videos on YouTube. But not being able to sync Gmail with your computer (like with Gears), or even use a calculator, notepad, or Office-esque Suite is not good. (Oh, and by the way, I tried to access the site in the link while not on Chrome OS - it didn’t work.)

However, some Great Features
So, the big suspected disappointment of mine is true: Chrome OS can do absolutely nothing if it’s not online. But the good thing? It’ll be able to do stuff when it’s finished - I hope. If not, there’s a massive flaw in the product, and it’s almost not worth having. But is does have some excellent features: it’s free, I couldn’t crash it or freeze it (only giving it 512mb of RAM), and it can do about 95% of what I use my computer for with no problems. And the time between powering on and being able to send emails is easily 10x faster than my computer, and still way faster that my school’s computers, which have none of the startup stuff which I have.

So, overall?
This operating system is pretty cool. Definitely worth the 400mb total download (virtual machine + operating system) to play around with it. One large disappointing feature, but matched by some really positive ones. I can’t wait to see how the final product turns out, because if they can fix this one big thing then it will definitely be worth using more regularly.

Hope this has been informative to any of you reading. And if you do happen to try this out, don’t hesitate to let me know how it goes, or mention anything extra that you find in there.
Lenny

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Now playing: Dario Marianelli - Lust At The Abbey
via FoxyTunes

B.C. Bow Contest

Nitrome’s brand-new game, B.C. Bow Contest is out, yet incomplete. Or, rather, they’re adding parts on to it later, which should be good.
It’s quite a decent game, although parts of it are messy. For one, it’s very easy to win - if you cheat. Well, it’s not strictly cheating. First thing to do is get yourself a MochiGames account, then buy the two weapons that you can get: the Mine Arrow and the Golden Arrow (both pictured here). To win, almost certainly, any round, just shoot a golden arrow, then a mine arrow (getting the 1000 points), then a normal arrow to get rid of it so your opponent can’t get any points (however you’ll keep your 1000). Alternatively, if you have any coins - for some reason I had 400, so I bought the Infection Arrow - you can buy an arrow to give you an advantage (I recommend my choice, because it takes your opponent’s points). This way, you end up with scores like this.

Types of Arrows
Other than the basic ones, there are a whole range of arrows that you get after defeating certain enemies, as well as Premium ones that you can buy with coins. Note: The ones you win from battle run out; the ones you buy will just run out temporarily. So, you have your normal arrows, the bomb arrows, the shield arrow, the splitter arrow, the stone arrow (pictured above, and also here), the super-special-bonus arrow (with rainbow multiplier effect! See for yourself), the no wind arrow, the boot arrow (which does a really poor job at hiding a target), the straight arrow, the copy arrow (looks cool in mid-air), and the invincibility arrow. Phew.
There are also some other ones, but you have to buy these so I didn’t get them. You can look in their store for yourself if you’re curious.

Opponents
These guys are fun. You can choose between two cavemen initially (pictured up the top), but after you defeat someone you can also play at them, too. You get Missing Link (not to be confused with regular link), cave girl, Dread (my personal favourite), Sabre Tooth, Baby, and, lastly, Skull Head, who is currently the final opponent in the game.

Misc. Funny Stuff and Cool Stuff
I was lucky enough to mess up the game, thus causing no scores or text to display for about 16 hours. It made it very hard to win.

In some levels, you’ll find animals that will interact with you. The first is the Green Dinosaur, pictured to the right, who will cry if you hit him (but as he’s a massive obstacle, that happens frequently). You also get birds who carry targets, which are actually quite annoying, and this animal that moves every time you hit it or the target, which is annoying yet fun.
Oh, and the team clearly didn’t think through the abnormally large skull-hat of the last opponent. When you choose him as a character, he gets the arrow mid-way through his hat.

All in all, quite a fun game, and I really look forward to their upcoming Fire Cup, which looks to be even more challenging than these ones (but, I’m sure, just as easy to cheat on).

Site/Podcast

Due to TheRealN site difficulties, the podcast will be non-functional for the next month or so. If you’ve already downloaded songs, it’s fine, but if not then you won’t be able to for a while (unless you really want one, in which case email me). Hopefully it’ll be back up really soon.

School Music

Lately I’ve been to a few of my school’s concerts (for a change, not performing in them), and am in the process now of uploading several of the recordings to YouTube. Check out the videos here, or the audio here.

APOD

Surprisingly impressive over the past few days. An amazing shot of the Crab Nebula, a weird shot of different galaxy types, a stunning black and white shot of Cygnus, The Bubble, Secen Sisters (or an epic fire-and-ice duel), the Moon on halloween (no way that’s a coincidence!), and the Ring Nebula.

I think that’s about all for now. It was really just to show off about completing the new Nitrome game in only a few days, anyway. Fun stuff - enjoy!
Lenny

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Now playing: Camille Saint-Saëns - Volières
via FoxyTunes

Went away for a few days, and completely forgot to write before I went. Essentially, there’s a new Nitrome shoot-em-up kind of game, and it’s moderately challenging. Took about 3 days to complete… here’s the info!

Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift is Nitrome’s newest game. It’s pretty fun to play, though can be challenging at times (personally, I found the last two levels to be quite easy, but the third-last was the hardest of the lot). In this game, you have to shoot the miscellaneous zombies and such that appear around the screen. I’ll give a brief overview of the good and bad things in the game - as well as some basic gameplay stuff.

Playing The Game
You’ve got your gun, which can shoot things, and provide handy bullet holes in walls (these are, however, completely useless). The gun can overheat if you use it constantly for a long time, though I never had this problem while playing. Some crates are scattered around levels - if you shoot certain ones, you’ll end up firing grenades at zombies.
Other crates will give you a sword, though I would not advise getting these unless you’re trying to kill one specifically hard enemy. Trying to kill lots of little ones with a sword will both make the game lag horribly, and prove less efficient than a gun does.
Then, lastly, you have your shield, which will slowly break up if it takes enough damage. Press space to use it, and block airborn attacks (more on these later).

Good Things
You kidding? This is a game about zombies!
Yet, despite that, there is at least one good thing in this game; two, in fact. The first, which can be seen on the left over here, is something that will restore your shield. This is so helpful because, towards the later levels when you just have things to block non-stop and not enough time to kill enemies, your shield will break up really quickly. At some points, I was down to the final piece (I don’t think it can go any further, but I never found out).
The other useful object is a potion that will restore your health. You can take damage quickly at times, and these become very useful - though not as much as shield-restore does.

Bad Things
Other than zombies, another enemy that you run into early on is the flower. If you don’t shoot the top of these flowers, you will be poisoned, which essentially means that your cursor will go all over the place and it becomes very hard to kill anything. Also, if you are hit with the purple blobs that they shoot, you will be poisoned - plus you’ll lose a life. Another way to get poisoned is to shoot the posion potions that lie around some levels.
You’ll also find these flying bugs, which will shoot green blobs, which will similarly hurt but not poison.
You also run into these gargoyles, which shoot yellow blobs, and can only be damaged while their mouths are open. Kind of annoying, but they usually appear separate to other enemies, so I found them OK.
After these three, the game starts to get a bit more intense. You find gigantic knight-puppets that want to shoot you (these are the only enemies I advise using swords against), collapsable statues that do the same, but are easy to keep out of the way (just shoot them); and these massive guards that will shoot lots of yellow balls and are only hurt when you shoot their centre.
There are also some bug-like enemies, which are both annoying and relaxing. The first of these is a tiny bug which doesn’t actually do anything at all - at least, not that I could find. The second bug is small, and will just walk around walls, but if left for long enough will jump at you and you’ll need to use your shield. These live in a hive, which, if you destroy, will stop bugs coming out for a bit.
Lastly there are gigantic centipede-like creatures that will walk about and shoot you. The way to kill them is by shooting every part of their bodies until it breaks, and then you can go for the head. Irritating, especially when there are multiple ones.

Misc. and Unrelated

In some levels, a girl will either fall from the sky or come out of a cage (you must free them, otherwise you lose a life), and wander around until they find an exit. It is your duty to protect them, or you will be hurt. They’re quite annoying. Oh, and why the bridge? If you shoot bridges you can crush zombies and other creatures, but on the down side you can also hurt your poor little ‘friend’.
This game also comes with some beautiful landscape shots, like a picture of the moon, and lightning (click for enlarged pictures).

Oh, and, at the end of the last level, you will find a golden zombie, which I couldn’t get a screen shot of without dying first. This guy is highly annoying, but you just have to keep shooting him and he’ll die.
And that’s all, really.

APOD

Not too much in these past two weeks, surprisingly. Mid-October brought with it a good shot of The Milky Way, the awesome Nebula of M33, and the Star Pillars. I could swear these have been in several photos that I’ve put up, but here they are again.

Sydney - Religion and Music

Lately, large parts of my academic and social life have lead me to Sydney, where I have now been once consistently per month (for three months, and chances are I’ll be back soon again). The first was our music trip, which encompassed a whole lot of practice, and a small amount of sight-seeing. I have my cliché photo of the Harbour Bridge, and others of the Opera House. It’s all been very enjoyable.
A large part of that particular trip was spent at Sydney Grammar, which would have to be one of the most hospitable schools that I’ve ever been to. After days of intense practice, on both harp and voice, we got the opportunity to perform in the Opera House itself, which was certainly the highlight of the trip.
Holidays didn’t really get any photos, but that’s OK. Our religion trip, however, rewarded me with several good photos, though we were usually not able to take photos inside buildings. We started our trip with the Helensburgh Hindu Temple, which was very different to any other religious places that I’d encountered. From there, we travelled to St. Mary’s Cathedral, which was as stunning as it had ever been, despite construction work on the exterior. Then to the Great Synagogue, which was equally as fascinating, and to the Bahá’í temple, which was perhaps the most unusual place of the ones that we visited, simply by being unlike any religion that I’d studied.

On our second day there, we got to visit the Lakemba Mosque, which was quite visually interesting, and then go to the Nan Tien Buddhist Temple, where we got to stay the night. For me, this was the most enjoyable part of the trip, but this was partially due to it being the first major chance that we had at relaxing and soaking in knowledge in a time span of over an hour.

All in all, the trips were amazingly enjoyable, and I’d certainly recommend visiting every single one of the places that we went to, on both trips.
That’s certainly all of my interesting news for the past few weeks and months. More to come… perhaps later, but in the mean time, check out the Photos Page, where I shall be adding some photos of the religion trip (Sydney ones are already there).
Lenny

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Now playing: Disney - Under The Sea (The Little Mermaid)
via FoxyTunes

Cave Chaos

Nitrome’s brand new game, as shiny as the jewels that you can collect on the way. Frankly, I would have quite liked if this game went 2 or 3 times faster, but other than that it was quite decent. It starts off quite simply, and gets reasonably challenging towards the middle and later levels, but after that, like some of their other games, I found that you’ve got the hang of it enough to do the last few levels with no retrying.
So, uh. The little guy to the left is you. I couldn’t get a picture with his eyes open, but oh well. You walk (or run, as much as your little character can run) to the right of the screen, trying to constantly avoid the enemies and rocks that fall on you, and eventually get to the exit. Although you don’t have health, they can you down and cause you to retry the level. Other such inanimate objects are barrels, and boxes (as well as larger rocks). Oh, and there are mushrooms, which will give you small boosts into the air. And also little mine carts, which you’ll often need to get across rails (however rocks and similar items don’t fall through these, so if you push them on you can balance just fine).

Enemies
The help menu in the game gives all of the enemies wonderfully friendly names, but don’t be confused! These things can be seriously annoying, even though they don’t do any damage. There is one, and only one, way to definitely avoid all of them, and that is to be ahead of them (alternatively, you can jump over most of them).
Firstly, there’s Dyna-Mo, or "’Splode-Bunny", who will try and blow up the ground underneath you by throwing dynamite. Stay ahead of him to ensure you avoid the blasts, but watch for debris. Then there is Pushy, who is by far the creepiest of the lot - just stay ahead of him, or jump over him.
To my right, we have Mr. Nibbles, who is by far the cutest of the enemies in this game. Unfortunately, he appears quite often, and is annoying. Stay out of the way so he doesn’t jump on you. Captain Tongue is also quite adorable, but very annoying, so stay ahead of and/or jump over him, too. Then comes Mo and DJ, who I didn’t even realise were two creatures (still one enemy) until I read this. Just jump over him - it’s easy enough to do.
Hurl, or Mr. Glue, who you can see at the top of this section, will leave you stuck to the ground. The only way to avoid this is to jump over it, unfortunately. And lastly there’s Silky the Spider, whom you just have to stay ahead of to get past (although there appears to be enough time after he moves to get past anyway).

Good things
There are a few bonuses in this game, which are often necessary to complete levels. The double-jump can be see to the left, and is often placed and necessary (or at least very helpful) for several levels. There are also bombs, which will clear all enemies on the screen, and invincibility, which will kill enemies if you run into them (but only lasts for three enemies). I’d try to stick to double jump if you have the choice, because it is generally the most useful of the three.
Other things? Uh. There are these little flippy paddles that will generally not be horizontal when you want them to be. Make sure you’re watching when they’re rotating so you don’t fall off.

Anyway, in short, it’s quite a good game, and certainly one of their better games, even though the difficulty kind of tapers off a bit too early (personally, I found level 17 the hardest). Upon completion you will be granted the rather dull ending screen:

And then this will be followed b a miniature cutscene, ending with this shot:

Floriade

Canberra’s very own flower festival is once again on this year, with over 1 million flowers depicting the "Mind, Body and Soul" theme (more cool facts on which they used can be found here). I wish I had time to elaborate on this, but unfortunately I don’t - in the mean time, be sure to check out the photos page to see all of the good shots that I managed to take.

APOD

GigaGalaxy Zoom put out a photo of the stunning Lagoon Nebula, which APOD featured a few days ago, but there has been no extraordinary pictures for the past week or so.

OK, well, tiny bit rushed here, but I really wanted to get this out before tomorrow, which is when school starts back up for us, and I start year 12. Oh, the joys that will come - expect less frequent and less dedicated blog posts.
In the mean time, enjoy the rants on the current games, and there’ll be something soon to come on the trip to Sydney.
Lenny

Nebula

Fitting in pawfectly with their last game, Nitrome’s new game, Nebula, is about space (though thankfully not again about cats). In this game you have to control the little character to the right using only your mouse, by leaving little trails or making wild flailing motions (incidentally, these are often more useful than the former).

To simplify me expanding on any points, here’s a nice list of everything you’d need to know:

Basic gameplay
You’re a little star, on its way to becoming a fully-fledged big star like your helper. It really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with nebulas, although there are some galaxies floating around in the ambient background. There are occasional areas where you are unable to control the star - these are marked by a funny pattern of Xs - although this barely affects the difficulty because there’s generally little that can hurt you when you’re not in control. Your aim is to eventually collect all of the keys that are lying around the universe.

Good Things
There are some things in the game which are actually good. Most crucially, there are lives. Because in the unlikely circumstance that you actually lose one, you’ll want to regain it quickly. Then there are bombs that are useful for blowing up bad guys (I’ll get to them). And the super-bomb, which will destroy all enemies on the screen. Then there are some icons which will affect your star. There’s the star-splitter, which will give you an extra two stars for a short time (good for bashing through walls). Then there are objects which will slow you down for a short time, causing you to look like some horribly ill person, but then give you a mega-kick (see right) which allow you to go through practically everything. On a similar note, there are just objects which give you temporary invincibility, causing you to look like this, which is helpful.
Then there are mystery boxes, which will give you a variety of different good things. And trippy wormholes (or so they’re called in the game, but they don’t look much like inter-spacial portals to me), which take you to a new part of the level. Oh, and switches, which will allow you to travel past some objects when you make them transparent.

Bad Things
Lasers. Ooh, so much fun. Don’t run into these, unless you enjoy a slow and painful death. There are Big Blue Bullies or something like that (I’m thinking of Mario, but oh well), which will either come out of boxes, or just instinctively be in the level for the sake of annoying you. You can also be hurt by mines, although these only appear in a few levels. You’ll commonly see these little… things, but don’t worry too much about them - they’re quite easy to avoid. The only really annoying enemies are these big ones (see left) which you can’t go through, even during your 5-or-so-second hurt-time after initially hitting them. Very annoying creatures, but easy enough to get rid of.

From a gaming perspective, I found this to be quite a decent game. It’s not terribly hard (and the last level is yet again a bit of a let-down), but it’s pretty enjoyable to play, even if it’s not quite as good as some of their others.

APOD

APOD has really pleased me in these past few weeks. Most of their pictures have been really good. However, some are well above the rest - here are the ones I’d put in that category:
Great colourful picture of The Tarantula Zone, and a stunning UV shot of Andromeda (just think, that’s a whole other galaxy; just a speck of dust in the universe…), some Auroras over Yellowknife, a gigapixel shot of our galaxy’s centre (also, be sure to check out the Gigagalaxy Zoom site, which features more stunning photos like that), and another of our entire galaxy (this one is 800 megapixels - wow), a colourful picture of Orion’s Belt, Carina Pillars and Jets, which is possibly the best of the lot - check out the hover-over, too. Just thinking that the pillar is 2 lightyears in length… the mind boggles.

Podcast - back with more updates!

Awesome news for today! The podcast is now working normally with iTunes - something to do with a coding error which has now been fixed.
Also, there are a massive FOUR new updates! Be sure to check out Ode to an Old Woman, To an End, Whispers, and Woke Up.
I’d like to say that there’s more music coming soon, but year 12s starts tomorrow, so while I have a number of unfinished songs, they may remain unfinished for some time to come. But to make up for that, there should be a game coming out soon with my music in it - something good to look forward to.

Rockitty

Rockitty is Nitrome’s newest game, once again based on the world of cats (however this time with a new, inter-stellar twist!). This leaves the count of Nitrome cat games at a stunning 5 (if you include the two Twin Shots) on the main page alone - then if you get started on Dog House and several others involving cats, you could be up to nearly 10. Actually beat this about a day after it came out, but I’ve been so caught up in school work that I haven’t had a chance to write about it.

So, you are a cat in space, and your goal is to fly around for long enough that you accidentally collide with your kittyship, which you must have accidentally misplaced somewhere in space. Oops.
There are a whole range of weird things that your cat can do. It can travel in bubbles, or swim through milk. It herds Space Cows, and tries to avoid other creatures like Space Squids and Space Burning-Fire-Things (both of which can hurt you almost as much as flying into open space will).
There are also other fun things to collide with, like teleporting devices. You can also try and link keys up to open new areas - in fact, you need to do this on several occasions, sometimes with the teleporters too.

This game also offers some amazingly fun bonus levels (which actually count as in-game levels too), where you just try and get as many points as possible. These levels look a little something like this, this, this (though clearly I’d already eaten a whole stack of fish there), and this.

In short, it’s a new, fun, slightly innovative game. The restrictions on steering and health make some portions of the game quite challenging, but I wouldn’t expect it to take more than a few days to complete.

Other Games

As part of my exam revision I’ve also been playing several games - plus, Nitrome hasn’t released one in a while. A puzzle game that I particularly enjoyed was Little Wheel. Sure, it only took maybe an hour or so to complete, but the faux-3D animation is simply stunning, and game play is very good. Plus, it doesn’t force-feed you any of the solutions to the puzzles (except at the beginning). So, though Miniclip may be an occasionally annoying game site, I’d strongly recommend playing this game (even more than the others in this post, actually).

Also played a game on Kongregate, advised by a friend; Max Damage. In this game, you try and shoot cannon balls at objects to break them as much as possible, and thus destroy a greater value of stuff. Hardly a puzzle game, or even an action game, but it’s quite a fun lets-destroy-stuff time-waster.

APOD and the Hubble

APOD has had a lot of good pictures, and a lot of bad ones. Some of my personal favourites from the last five weeks are…
Triple Sunrise, Galaxies in Pegasus (actually a dullish photo, but the galaxy in it is stunning), Diamonds/Bailey’s Beads, Moonbows (linked to from a new one), People shooting a Laser into the centre of our galaxy (looks like something out of an old Sci-Fi film, actually), The Gum Nebula, Cluster Galaxy lens effect (read the information at the bottom of the page. Wow), Saturn’s Ring Equinox, Yet another picture of Cepheus, Saturn’s Rings again, A timeline of Saturn’s tilt, Star Trails, and A shot from the upgraded Hubble.
On that note, I also want to bring attention to the new Hubble telescope. NASA has been doing some revisions, and it’s giving suite amazing photos. More of them can be found here. I find it fascinating to think that the telescope has been active for longer than I’ve been alive (19 years now), and it thought to still be active for another 5 years at least, when another telescope (JWST, I think) it set to be released to take infa-red pictures - the Hubble only takes visible light, X-rays, and Ultra-violet, I think. Anyway, definitely check it out, because it’s pretty interesting.

So, I think that’s all for now. There should be more updates and comics in a week, when I come back from Sydney (I’ll put up some photos from Melbourne then too) and exams are finished.

Lenny

The following was written over the course of two Religion lessons. The theme of the story is “Buddhist Beliefs and Ethics”. Had to swap a few fonts for internet purposes (as well as colours, and the picture, but it’s got the same meaning), but I got 20/20, so I hope you like it as much as my teacher evidently did! ~ Lenny

The security cameras swivelled around as Hanson walked up the the building. Not too tall or well built, he was your usual office worker. The newly installed automatic doors parted to let him through, after a brief flash of his security card. He walked briskly, only mildly noticing that there was no one at the office. That didn’t matter, though; he was early.

He walked up to the desk, ignoring the lack of his co-workers. After all, how many people would turn up at 6:30? Not many, he figured. He sat down, and booted up his computer. While it turned on, he unpacked his books from his leather briefcase, which had been a proposal gift from his new work. But before he could go there, he had come back to do one final thing.

He put the CD into the computer, hoping that it would recognise it without problems. His wish was granted. A small window came up on the screen. “CLOSE ALL PROGRAMS?” it read. Hanson hit the small “YES” button. The computer froze for a moment, trying to understand his command. Then, suddenly, the screen went black. Hanson waited, trying to understand what had happened. Then a small message slowly typed itself on the screen. “ARE YOU SURE? NO.” Then the computer went off.

Hanson say there for a minute, wondering what to do. After thinknig, he pushed the power button. Nothing happened. He checked the connections, making sure it was plugged in properly, but he couldn’t see anything wrong. There couldn’t have been a power surge - especially not with one computer. And besides, the computer on the desk next to him still had a small green light displaying that it was on. Well, no point wasting time.

He pressed the small eject button on the CD drive, which thankfully worked because it wasn’t electronic. Once the other computer had started up he put the CD in, pressed “YES” once again, and waited. Black screen; same green text. Hanson sighed.

He tried all of the computers on his floor. They all had the same result. Every single computer in the entire building was now non-operational. Hanson didn’t know what was happening. He tried to leave, but the door wouldn’t open. His security card wasn’t validating. He tried breaking the door, but was nowhere near strong enough to break the shatter-proof glass. He paced around the building, trying to find another way out. and that was when he saw the message.

It was small, and easily blended in with the wall. Little black letters, hardly visible against the brown colour scheme of his work. If not for the fact that he had been paying attention, Hanson wouldn’t have seen it at all. “Life is unsatisfactory,” it read. Sure got that right, Hanson thought. Stupid CD. Stupid Job.

He kept looking for a way out. None were found. Every so often he’d find another scrawled black message. “Life is insubstantial,” says one, and another read “Life is impermanent.” By now he’d checked every room in the building that he could get in to. It was after midday, and he was getting hungry. Still no one had arrived at work. What was happening?

He walked, still, taking a break to eat the small amount of food he packed. Sitting and looking around now, he saw the original message that he found: “Life is unsatisfactory.” Under that, he noticed, was another message in even smaller writing. “There is suffering in the world. Craving is suffering.”

Too right, Hanson thought, I want to get out of this ruddy place. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded in his head. After finishing his hastily-packed lunch, he walked around again, this time looking for any device that he could use to get out. Suddenly, it came to him. His phone! Why he hasn’t thought of it before was beyond him. He want back to his desk and took it out of his briefcase. A small icon indicated that there was no reception. Upon investigation, Hanson sound that there wasn’t any in the building. No matter where he walked, the small icon remained the same. He went to switch it off, and a small message came up on the screen, “YOU CAN END THE SUFFERING.” Then it switched off, and he lay it down on his desk.

Hanson sighed. But how could he end his suffering? There was no way out of the building,  and after all his searching he still hadn’t found a way. But he had gotten himself into the building… he could get himself out again. Good logic, he thought.

He picked up his briefcase and sat it down on his desk, intending to look through it and find something to help him escape. Instead, he saw a small circle underneath it, marked into the carpet. He looked closer.

A small scrap of paper lay next to the circle. “Right understanding. Right thought. Right speech. Right action. Right livelihood. Right effort. Right mindfulness. Right concentration. This is the path to end your suffering.”

Hanson stared. That was all? Ridiculous. How could he get out? that was all he cared about. Follow the circle, Hanson. It was all he could think of. So, where to begin, if he was getting ouy? Concentration, mindfulness, and effort. Concentration, concentration…

He sat, and thought. Closed his eyes, but did not sleep. the clock on the wall kicked softly, yet he did not care. Suddenly, he knew what he should do. He needed to find more messages.

So Hanson searched the building, yet again. He upturned chairs and looked under desks to find to clue to getting out. finally, he found what he was looking for. One of the desks on the top floor had poorly scribbled writing underneath it. the pen marks were scarce in placed, because it was written upside-down. Hanson spent some time trying to understand it.

“Take refuge in this nature. Take refuge in these teachings. We can help you.”

Hanson didn’t understand. He was being helped? Helped to do what? Presumably to do what he wanted to do, which was get out of the building. But how could they help him?

He didn’t find any more messages after that. For something to do, he wrote a list of all the messages he had found. This helped tie together his thoughts, he found. After thinking about it, he decided the sensible thing to do was the follow the group of instructions about the circle. But what could be improved on?

He sat more, and thought. The longer he let his mind turn his options around, the more he realised what was wrong. He had failed to have the right thought, or the right mindfulness. Hanson got up, and went back to his desk. He stared at the lifeless computer, and then picked up the CD that he’d left there from before.

Without hesitation, he snapped the CD in half. No more new job. Hanson didn’t care any more. They could keep that new briefcase. He heard a door swing open softly, and walked downstairs. There was still no one where, but to his delight he found that the door was open.

He went to walk through, and stopped. Something was wrong. He turned, and saw a small piece of paper on the ground. He turned it over, but found nothing written on it. Hanson took a pen from his jacked, and wrote neatly, “We have helped you.”

Then he walked out of the door. He was never seen again.