Pokemon LeafGreen run - Progress update

So I've got six out of eight badges and about to start the trek to Cinnabar Island...once I stop going in and out of the Safari Zone in a desperate quest for a Chansey.

My current party of Pokemon (that actually fight rather than act exclusively as an HM slave) consists of:

Butterfree (level 46)
Blastoise (level 44)
Primeape (level 33)
Raticate (level 37)

Once I find a Dratini, that will be power-leveled to a Dragonite. I also need to decide on a Grass Pokemon to raise - might go with Tangela, more likely to go with Bellsprout and power-level it to a Victreebell.

I may just give up on the collecting of Pokemon and go back to just powering my way through the game...

Adventures in Baking

There's a recipe for Peppermint creme biscuits I'll be making today, that my mother has used a few times - which is incredibly delicious. Its got three layers - crumbly chocolate biscuit bottom, peppermint creme center topped with a thick layer of solid chocolate. 

I'll be making a batch to take with me to Reading for my partner's birthday (because biscuits are easier to transport on the rail network than cake). Photos of my efforts will probably end up on Twitter somewhere.

January One Game A Month!

So after many months of staring at One Game a Month and thinking "I'll do that sometime...yeah..."

I actually got off my butt and MADE A GAME! It's tiny, it was made in 9 days (3 of which I was away at a funeral) and it's a little bit buggy still, but it's got a start, a middle and an end.

It's a slightly humourous look at the trials and tribulations of dealing with "extra lives" - you take on the role of Death's assistant and go off with him to recover someone who got through the system by accident.

It's very tiny (probably about 10-30 minutes, depends on how long the word puzzles take you) and written in Python. It's a command-line script, so as long as you have Python installed it should run on pretty much any system (It's not tested on anything but 64-bit Mint 14, so if it -does- break, let me know)

Resurrection is listed on my 1GAM profile. The link is to my public GitHub repo - which has a Readme that needs to be looked at before you play.

Have fun everyone!

Cosplay Crochet

So for my upcoming Dark Link cosplay for Telford MCM, I'll be hand-sewing the tunic up (unless I can find a suitable dress that I can modify) and crocheting a hat and gauntlets.

I can crochet stuff up really quickly, plus these are fairly simple things to make (though I still need to learn decreasing)

Once I finish the prototype green Link hat, I'll post up the pattern of it. I've not been able to find a free crochet pattern for a Link hat so I'm making my own and will make it available to everyone.

If the gauntlets are any good I'll probably put up a pattern for those as well.

Telford MCM!

Telford MCM is coming up - one day only on the 15th of February. I'm planning to attend, if just to see one person from uni and introduce my best friend to a good convention for once.

Undecided what I'm going as yet, will be looking through my recent ideas but Pikachu is a backup (as my bestie will be going as Ash)

I'll keep you all updated, hopefully I'll know what I'll be going as sooner to the day.

Pinterest and Reddit

I'm on Pinterest!

Only on it to gather patterns and ideas, not for much more. I'd link it but there's really little point in seeing my assortment of "ooo that looks nice"

Unless I do anything interesting with it, which I doubt.

I've also revived my reddit account - 8bitgoggles. I tend to lurk around on various development subreddits, haven't posted in a while but I intend to get back to it soon. Once I have things to post and comments to make of course. When it becomes active, I'll probably link to it on my website.

More design docs!

I uploaded another design document to my website - this time for a game called "Past Reality". It's one of the most fleshed out ideas for a game I've had, resulting in the combination of two ideas (one for a GURPS campaign, the other for an rpg).

Here's a direct link to the document. If you're interested in checking out the others, here's the list.

Another one may be going up soon - as usual, I'll let people know as and when they do.

More about Arma Gold

So I tackled a few more tutorials - namely shooting things, controlling tanks and helicopters.

Helicopters ended badly. Badly, into the ground and on fire. I am not a very good pilot. Tanks ended better (drove it, manned the guns and commanded the tank awkwardly. Got back to the base, couldn't figure out refueling so shot the officers instead until I got sent to jail and failed the mission.

...Yeah, I enjoy doing silly things when I can't figure out what to do. The greatest point of Arma is also it's weakness - the sheer amount of controls that you need to know for each context is rather difficult to pick up quickly. But the level of control and the things you can do are worth the steep learning curve.

Thankfully I can fire a few of the guns, and even hit targets! So at least in that I can get somewhere. I dread attempting the Leadership or Combat Helicopter training missions, something -will- go impressively wrong.

Next time I play it I may have a controls guide to hand just to make my life a bit easier...

Crochet Update: the third

I seem to be doing a lot of it at the moment, don't I?

Currently, I'm working on a baby blanket for my friend's newborn grandchild. I'm about a quarter of the way to making a plain mint green crocheted one, which is pretty much just a huge granny square. I'm basing the size off my own old baby blanket, which I've kept all these years.

After I've made this basic one, I think I'll learn a few more square patterns and try making more blankets, as well as all the other things I have to learn to make...

More Crochet

So the other night I decided to learn pretty much all the basic stitches in one go from Crochet: Step by Step, a really excellent book I borrowed from the library. I may actually have to buy a copy, it's been so useful!

I can now do double, treble, half treble, double treble and treble treble. Slip stitch is a bit of a weird one, but I can sort of do it. Now I have to learn reverse double for a pattern - I'm making a potholder as a present for someone and reverse double is one of the necessary stitches.

I'll learn it in time, hopefully.

Initial play: Arma Gold

I admit, Military Simulations seem like the last genre I'd ever touch (aside from RTSs and MOBAs), but I have a friend who introduced me to Arma II - plus a few of the more interesting/impressive mods. Since the new weekly Humble Indie Bundle had Arma Gold and Arma II + expansions, I got given them by my partner (who bought the bundle for one particular game)

Unfortunately, Arma II will not run on my poor laptop - my processor is underpowered and I only have integrated graphics. Thankfully, still powerful enough to be able to run Arma Gold...though I did turn down everything to "low" or "very low" in the graphics just to make sure.

I lamented the lack of a female character to play and the fact you can't customise your character. But there is a wide variety in faces, I'll give them that. Because I know Arma's very complex, I decided to go for the tutorial levels rather than jump straight into the story mode with no clue as to what to do.

I've only done movement so far (I was playing it at 2am, I have an excuse!) but oh man, I've not squealed over a movement system before. Arma Gold's really smooth, though takes a little bit to get used to - particularly as I'm used to games that require crouch to be held rather than pressed once.

Sometime soon, I'll go through the rest of the tutorials and have a proper report back on how Arma Gold plays. But the initial play of the movement tutorial? I can see me playing this quite a bit.

One Game a Month - Janurary Entry: Idea

So One Game A Month is something I've been following for the last 9 months. Finally, this year, I will actually take the plunge and join in.

My game for this month (which I hope will get done in the time left...) will be a humourous little text-based adventure game, where you play as Death having to bring someone back to the realm of the living. It's called Resurrection, and a design document will be up soon on my site - I've written the first draft already, but I need it to be more refined with map concepts before it goes up.

For now, I'll go make maps and hopefully some basic movement. Script may take a while...

Beginning Crochet

My mum taught me how to make a granny square the other day, and I've since got a little bit addicted.

Crochet is also a lot easier than knitting - or at least, I picked it up a lot faster. I've got a few books out of the library so I can learn some more stitches and I have some patterns I got online for things to make.

Hopefully I'll have something to show off soon!

Gamification

Gamification is good in some ways. I use a few sites that do, like Coderwall and Khan Academy. 

Coderwall is pretty passive with regard to the badges and the tips and tricks people put up are really good. I've posted a few to Twitter. I have my GitHub linked to Coderwall so I have a few badges as well. It's nice, but more importantly it can be left alone and I don't have to think about it. Visit every now and then and check if I have any badges, awesome.

Khan Academy is a bit more interactive but it is a learning site. I like the badges and skill levels, it's another little incentive to learn stuff. Currently I'm trawling through the "World of Maths" stuff in order to improve my maths skills.

One less good example is a thing called HabitRPG. Well, less good for me. It's a site that provides some motivation to do things - like daily tasks, weekly tasks and one-time tasks. It gives you exp when you complete these things, you lose health when you don't. It's a neat idea, but I have everything laid out on a TiddlyWiki so it's near-pointless for me. It may be different for other people, so I recommend my readers give it a try.

Slight slump.

I have a large number of ideas for games. Some are mere scribbled ideas, with bits of screen layout and tiny notes, some are fairly fleshed out ideas others are somewhere in the middle.

Despite all these ideas running around, I have no idea what to even start with. It's like a writer's block but for just game-related creativity. I'm trying to divert my frustration with other things, like crochet, writing and playing games but it's still there, nagging away at me.

I suspect that settling down to programming little things will get me back into it easier. This year, I want to learn both C# and JavaScript, so I can develop games that have a larger reach and have more skills that an employer might like...that's the plan, anyway. Need to take a few days to find a good book or tutorial for both of these languages.

Next gen consoles

I mean the PS3 and the Xbox 360.

I can feel the confused stares already... Anyway, I have a habit of not buying a generation of consoles until the next one has been out for a while. I didn't get a PS2 until 2008, and I bought an Xbox original in 2010. The Wii I have now was bought not long after the WiiU came out.

So now the Xbox One and PS4 are out, I should start thinking about getting a PS3 and Xbox 360. PS3 is probably my priority, considering it has a large number of RPGs I adore, plus a number of exclusives I've been wanting to get - like Kingdom Hearts 1.5 final mix and the God Of War collection. Usually I check Game or CeX for a preowned console, but this time I'm going to expand my search a bit and start keeping an eye out for stuff on Gumtree as well.

I'd love to be able to get hold of one of the early models of the PS3, but one of the slims would also serve me well. As long as it can play games, has all the leads and at least one controller I'm pretty happy. An added bonus would be to have it running Xlink Kai so I can get back into Monster Hunter. But I'm just hopeful there...

Another one bites the dust!

I finished another game on the list!

Well, mostly. I unlocked all the characters and worked through to the end with at least 2 characters. But still, Guilty Gear Judgment is pretty done and dusted. Just gonna obsessively finish everyone else's ending.

I'm really happy I finally unlocked Judgment - I had no idea how to when I first played it, but a quick look online told me how to. On the level before the fight with Judgment, you have to find all the letters of his name scattered about the level.

The one really neat thing though, is that on the character select screen the word "Judgment" is in the middle of the screen. I only realised when I unlocked Judgment that the letters that have been found are illuminated, which is really helpful. More helpful if it's noticed before you find them all though...

Backing up disk-based media

I've been working through my PS2 library and my films over the last few days in an effort to get everything backed up to a digital format, now I have drives big enough to hold them all.

It makes me a bit less paranoid about if I lose my collection or disks get damaged beyond repair - I have some fairly rare games I want to keep safe.

Some don't rip properly but I'll just work around those when I get to it. If anyone has any tips and tricks for ripping games on Linux Mint I'll happily accept them.

Yet another New Year's ToDo

I have a lot on there already. I have a few that have been finished, which is even better. It's morphing into a general todo list mixed in with the more "I want to finish this before the end of the year" which is pretty good.

The semi-major thing I have added is restarting doing stuff on my Khan Academy account and taking Udacity courses. I won't be returning to CodeAcademy, it didn't help at all when I was attempting to learn JQuery. I think that's just because I learn stuff in a particular way rather than anything bad on CodeAcademy's part. Learning from adding to part-written code doesn't work for me. I have to write stuff from scratch, like in Learn Python the Hard Way.

So hopefully, doing the Khan Academy stuff will improve my maths a lot, along with all the other subject areas they have. I'm going to try doing a bit every day, but if I can't keep that up, then every other day or when I feel like doing a large amount will also help.

RPi update!

My SD cards turned up last week, which is great. As soon as I find the right A/V equipment I'll be setting it up...probably on my dad's tv if I can't get the composite video working. I lack an HDMI tv/monitor, which is rather annoying in this case.

I do have a new keyboard for the RPi and Wii though. Briefly I considered getting a wireless keyboard for less cable management...but realised that all the wireless keyboards were at least twice the price of the cheap and sensible wired keyboard I got instead. I already have a spare mouse, which I use for gaming on my laptop so I'm pretty much set.

NOOBS is somewhere on my tower, so I'll be throwing that onto the SD card and setting it all up in the next day or so.

Two clothing projects finished, one started + borked phone

I finished the sleeves and the skirt I mentioned the other day. Unfortunately, my phone has decided that it can't connect to the camera, and my tablet's camera is dire (and front-facing) so pictures will have to wait for a bit.

I've already cut and pinned up the shorts I'm making, so I'll probably get those done in the next two days. I'll be resuming my hunts around charity shops for more clothes I can improve.

It also looks like I should finally cave and buy a new phone. My ZTE Blade has been on its last legs of usefulness for a while, but now the camera is getting flakier, its pushed me to the point where a new phone is a damn good idea.

Lately I have been keeping an eye out at new phones, and just yesterday I settled on the Samsung Galaxy 3 Mini as a viable replacement. Seems like I might have to do that sooner rather than later.

Raspberry Pi, Phase Zero

Also known as "I have all these ideas and only a 16GB SD card to put them on!"

I should have one on its way to me (hurrah Amazon!) and it will be finding a home in the RPi I have had since...late 2012? Oh dear, it's been a while.

At least I have some good ideas for what to make with it now. It may end up with three purposes. One is a test webserver. Another is acting as a host for XLink Kai, if I can obtain a cheap WiFi dongle for the Pi. The last use of all is the most likely - turning it into an open-source console/emulator that can be played anywhere. Like the old Plug'n'Play clone consoles that were fairly prevalent 10/15 years ago and have had a bit of a resurgence now.

 Hopefully I'll be able to house it in a console. I've been offered a broken GameBoy to use (assuming I can't repair it) but I would much prefer a NES or SNES. Another suggestion is to use a PSP shell, controls, screen and battery, but unfortunately I'm not sure how practical it would be. It might be easier to use a 3D printer to make a case...but that involves designing one.

I'll work it out soon. Until then, I'll keep eagerly awaiting the post for my order.

Sewing update - clothing

As well as the embroidery, I do have a few clothing projects ongoing.

One is a skirt made out of a pair of women's combat trousers, which is a present to a friend of mine. It's mostly complete aside from the hem of the skirt - roughly about half of it is sewn up.

The other is hemming up the sleeves I took off a dress to be worn as flared armwarmers. Think like the Vocaloid outfits, that kind of sleeve. I've hemmed one, the other is about a quarter of the way done. When I finish these items I'll show them off.

I have another clothing project after this - to modify a pair of brown cloth trousers into shorts, and give them lace edging around the legs and pocket tops.

Update to the website!

My design documents are live!

Feel free to have a read. Not all are up yet, and some need a lot adding to them, but the initial page addition is up there.

Hopefully you'll enjoy being able to look at these. Send me an email, message or a tweet if you've got suggestions, criticisms, anything at all! I'd like to hear from you.

Back to basics

Most of the cross-stitches I have planned are for increasingly more complicated sprites - from fighting games or from later era games.

To take a step back from all that, I'll be doing a mini-series of my childhood gaming heroes and heroines. So far I have planned to make up A Link to the Past Link and Zelda, Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach in Super Mario 2 (All-Stars version), Will from Illusion of Time, the Hero from Secret of Mana, Super Metroid version of Samus, along with a few Sega characters - Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, plus Blaze from the first Streets of Rage.

...Maybe "mini-series" is misleading, but the point stands that these are simple, 16-bit era sprites - and not giant screen-filling ones like the Link/Nayru one.

It will also be a nice change of pace from all the clothes-sewing I've been doing lately (which is getting a bit relentless)

The first of many completed games this year

That honour goes to...New Super Mario Bros 2!

Which was actually quite easy when I got stuck in. Haven't found the two hidden worlds or looked at the Star world yet, but I've saved the princess and that's good enough for now.

It takes one game off my to-complete list, which is fantastic! Hopefully the rest of the year will be this productive.

Update to the recipe wiki project

This wiki will have the largest single collection of vegan recipes that I know of, and will be ones that have been tried and tested by either of my parents or sometimes even myself.

A lot are adapted from non-vegan recipes, many have murky to straight out unknown origins and initially, I thought recipes were subject to copyright.

After a bit of research, I discovered that they aren't. Well, not quite "they aren't", but that the ingredients/basic instructions are -not- subject to copyright. Swathes of evocative text included with the instructions however, are definitely copyrighted. Thankfully, all of the recipes are very concise, and even include some alternative ideas on some dishes. 

So once I have added a few more than 6 recipes, it will probably end up on my website for all to see and download.

Musical Discoveries: Steampunk!

In particular, The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing. I was introduced to them early last year, when two friends played me the song Goggles (I can't think why...)

So when Christmas rolled around I asked my parents to get me their first album - I've been listening to it fairly solidly, gaining more new favorite songs. 

I really like these guys. A lot of "steampunk" music I've heard tries to be refined and smooth - they actually put the punk into steampunk! If you like punk, I fully recommend trying TMTWNBBFN.

Someday I will have to get the second album and the christmas one, but until then I'll be enjoying singing along to this one.

A resurrected project.

Since discovering TiddlyWiki, I've thought of another way to use it - and that is for something I've been trying to do for the last year or so. 

I started a LaTeX project - gathering up the huge amount of handwritten recipes that have been around since I was very young and probably before then, and putting them in an electronic format. I didn't get very far with the LaTeX document, partly because it failed to produce all the PDF at one point. Couldn't work out why so it got abandoned.

The last few months, I've been trying to work out a better way of storing and distributing this collection - then it struck me 2 days ago. What better than TiddlyWiki? It saves me from trying to write a Flask application to achieve the same thing and makes it into an extremely portable, interactive web-based cookery book which I can share with my family and friends. Who knows, maybe we'll start using some of the old recipes again.

New Section to the website?

You read that right folks, a new section is going up on my website very soon!

I've decided to upload all my game design documents to my site. I welcome people to critique them, add to them or even develop a game from them. I don't like sitting on my ideas when they could be out there, being played.

When it goes up, I'll make another post about it - I have to update a few and for some, upload the .tex files as well. They'll be up for grabs, though I implore people to credit me if they do use these ideas. A link back to my site, this blog or my twitter will be sufficient.

New Year's to do list - first draft finished!

I've also finished at least one item on it, which was to wipe my mum's laptop free of WinXP and put Linux Mint 13 on it. It's nearly done, I just need to find a decent CD ripper for it and all will be over. Until she finds the games or needs some other thing downloaded...

You can see the categories here. I think some of them could be collected under a single header but never mind. TiddlyWiki is really nice for these sorts of lists, it's amazing I've never found this before. 

Another good thing is I found the backup of my list on an old wiki so transferred my ideas over to this new one. Everything is getting consolidated into one place, which is great!

Now I've made a good start on this list, I suppose I should carry on as I started and clear off more items today. A lot will be done at the weekend - I'll be downloading Mint 16 and (in theory) upgrading my netbook, tower and probably my laptop as well. I'll also be taking advantage of the capless internet to download Dragon Age and Borderlands.

It's 2014!

It's also incredibly wet and windy in Wales, so I'm hiding in my house today. Sat in front of my tower writing up posts for you guys and setting up a local nginx server to run dokuwiki from.

"Why?" I imagine you ask?

Well, because I want a private local wiki to store my New Year's To Do List. I would set it up on my neglected RPi, but I still lack an SD card for it (will order one for it soon...) so for now it will be on my tower.

I always forget my New Year's Resolutions, but a todo list sticks around for a lot longer. So this year it's an ever-expanding list of things I want to learn, do or achieve by December 31st. Some may be unattainable, most should be doable. But the main aim is that I have a clear list of goals that can be expanded upon, that lives securely in my house and is accessible from any of my computers.

Having a private wiki on a webserver also appeals, but doing it this way (on my own network) means I can actually spend time learning nginx properly - another thing on my to do list!