Monday, October 31, 2005

Radek Hulan's international breakout!

Radek Hulan (idiot)
It seems that Radek Hulan (author of "the most advanced and most widely used CMS in existence", according to his words) has at last demonstrated his unique communication skills internationally (and became internationally pwned for the first time in history, as far as I know). That means I no longer have to explain the "Hulan experience" to English-speaking readers - it's now sufficient to provide the link above and let everyone experience his "screeming" for himself.

Note that the technical stuff is rather irrelevant in this context (although this one is funny if you know what DIFF is), just read how he expresses himself.

P.S: Please note I have the full moral right to make my opinions about Mr. Hulan public because I wrote better CMS than him, I have higher IQ, more money and bigger penis, which I'll use to make beautiful love to his daughter.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Compulsory obsessive something

Today, I went to visit my mother. She's an artist and she can never throw anything to the trash bin. She keeps everything and her flat looks like it. I'm pretty sure it's some sort of medical condition.

This is one of her many closets:

closet.jpg

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Night watch

At last, I had time to test the capabilities of our new Canon during night-time shooting (from our terrace). I'm not saying it's something gallery-worthy, but considering it was without the tripod, I'm rather satisfied. (As always, click for Flickr page with large versions. Also see the neighboring photos on Flickr.)

IMG_0160.JPG

Thursday, October 27, 2005

The inspirations of James Horner

James Horner is rather famous film music composer (mainly because of TITANIC, which is not one of his best works). He is also known for "borrowing" material from himself and other composers. And sometimes, I'm afraid, he goes too far. Listen to main titles from the movie Red Heat, supposedly "composed by James Horner". Now, listen to this music, composed by Sergei Prokofiev in 1938 (the interesting part starts around 1:00 mark).

Shame on you, James! If you heard the music from Red Heat closing titles, it's even more similar...

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

All your base are belong to Google

Something wonderful is happening. Watch base.google.com. I got in there a few minutes ago. Now it says "Forbidden 403". Official unveiling should take place soon (hours, not days).

UPDATE: I guess it will be days rather than hours before anyone will see it live again...

Never Say Never Again

Have a look at this rather well written NY Times article about Major Zeman and the purported remake. I must say I am not very enthusiastic about the idea of milking and destroying Zeman's legacy for a quick buck.

Warning: The article also features opinions of Jan "go fuck yourself, I know Glasgow" Culik. I recommend skipping the last three paragraphs.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Something fishy going on?

Karolina told me that she forgot to take the birth control pill yesterday. But I shouldn't worry because the chances of her getting pregnant are "one in 100". Everyone remember: 1 in 100, October 22.

And I thought she no longer likes me...

And now for something completely different: Autumn is here and the forests above Vysocany station are b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!

fall3.JPG

UPDATE: Also available as 1024x768 wallpaper (Albert, not Karolina).

Friday, October 21, 2005

Thanks, BMG

If I understand this royalty statement correctly, it seems that during Jan-Jun 2005, I earned minus 30 Crowns (about $1.20) from BMG for them selling CDs containing my music. Do I have to pay them for the privilege right now?

I guess this is proof that downloading kills music.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Functional response

It seems my previous post was slightly misunderstood. I know about functional languages for years. I think my first real experience with them was when I tried out Clean on Windows about 8 years ago and gave up after one week. As I wrote here, for example, I refused to switch my brain to "alien" functional mode.

The point of my post was that now I am trying again. And that I was surprised that functional languages could be FAST. Of course, my brain is still refusing to switch to functional mode. It's pretty hard after all those years and it's nothing more than "fun exercise" for me at this moment. Currently, programming plays no part in earning my living (last time it did, SmallTalk saved me).

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Programming language of the moment

During my search for the perfect programming language, I occassionally stumble upon functional languages. They are used mostly by old bearded people in white coats for mathematical problems.


However, Ocaml (or Caml) is supposedly able to generate native code whose speed is comparable with compiled C! That piqued my interest and I tried minimal Ocaml raytracer, whose speed was really suprising. Also note the whole raytracer is only 222 lines long. Another feature of functional languages seems to be the density of code - the ability to "say more" in less number of lines. But that also means you have to think more in order to code less.


If you have spare time and want to give Ocaml a try, read this online book. It's a good thing to refresh your brain by learning new programming philosophy that forces you to forget the design patterns you knew from procedural languages. It's really like when I started learning the first BASIC commands 25 years ago...

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Get transformed

Go here to upload your (or someone else's) potratit and tranform it to look like it's different race, age, etc...



The image on the right was created without any user input, fully automatically, just by selecting "make older"!

This is another example of complex science being used to create juvenile fun.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Signing off

Almost everything packed into crates. Powering down the servers. Reconfiguring IP addresses. Moving today and tomorrow. Off-line for at least 36 hours!!!!! Good-bye, Vinohrady, hello, Vysocany. Wish me luck.

pict1565.jpg

Monday, October 10, 2005

Excuse me, I just shat myself

Imagine this: You are at home alone, it's almost midnight and you are packing your dusty books from your dusty cabinets into crates. Suddenly, super-creepy voice says "Hey! No running in the hallway!".

Freddy Krueger in my closet

Then you remember the long-forgotten light-activated talking figurine of Freddy Krueger you got for your birthday many, many years ago and stashed it behind the books without taking out the batteries.

Albert v2

One hour ago, I found a lost dog on our street. He looked almost like Albert. Unfortunately, Karolina is out (taking care of her sister's bigass dog for the night) and I have to pack in preparation for the moving. I had no option but to take him to the Police.

However, if he was a "she", I'd definitely keep her for Albert to have sex with her...

Nalezenec

Videogame Aesthetics

Sort-of continuation of the previous Mario post. There is a great article over here about "Videogame Aesthetics", i.e. about the fact that most videogame developers today strive for "realism" (by which they mean "scary plastic mannequin humanoids with ragdoll physics"), neglecting all the artistic and gameplay possibilities they are given by today's hardware.

If nothing else, the article mentions some great original games. I never heard of Spheres of Chaos before, which is best described as "Asteroids as designed by Hunter S. Thompson". I also wholeheartedly recommend "Rez" for PS2, which can be bought for bargain price today.

The author also gets bonus points for putting Jet-Set Willy next to the article title.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Super Mario 64

Not only is the following image (stolen from GeekOnStun.com) really cute, it also presents some interesting food for thought.

For example, how is it possible that you can portray such a number of specific recognizable characters in 12x16 pixels? In fact, you can portray an Italian plumber being dressed up as specific recognizable characters! I cannot say I recognized all of them, but notice captain Kirk and Spock, The Village People or The Beatles. Really interesting how our brain handles the pop-culture matrix...

Happy Birthday to me

Our server died today, that's why some images cannot be viewed right now (also concerns fuxoft.cz and kompost.cz). We are working on it. Thanks for nothing, God, nice birthday present.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Come with me for fun in my buggy!

Today, I discovered a link on SomethingAwful.com, pointing to Italian singer duo Oliver Onions (Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis) and their "unique" audio intro. Yes, it's awful, but what's more important: This exact song brings back touching memories for anyone in this country between the ages of 30 and 40. That's because "Dune Buggy" is a theme song from Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill comedy from 1974, "Altrimenti ci arrabiamo", aka "Watch Out, We're Mad", aka "Zwei wie Pech und Schwefel", aka "Jestli se rozzlobíme, budeme zlí" ("When the bad guys get mad, the good guys get mad and everything gets madder & madder & madder!").

In 1970s Communist Czechoslovakia, we had no Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. We had Terrence Hill with Bud Spencer (and Michael Coby with Paul Smith ["Simon and Matteo"], their imitators). "Watch Out, We're Mad" was certainly their greatest work of art and everyone I knew saw it at least half a dozen times. The fact that I immediately recognized the song more than 20 years after I heard it for the last time is the testament to lasting quality of Italian entertainment.

I discovered the complete lyrics online and found them to be much less sophisticated than they appeared 25 years ago. In fact, back then, I had no idea they were in English (or, rather, should sound like they were in English). Go here for more audio mementos from this movie.

Also found this one on the "Watch Out, We're Mad" IMDB board: "Would you happen to know if the choir song is available on any soundtrack releases? My son wants to use it for a gymnastics routine. It does not appear to be on any of the Bud Spencer/Terence Hill Greatest Hits releases (volumes 1-6). That's a lot of music to be released without that piece." Listen to "Il coro dei pompieri" to hear what his son wants to use for his gymnastic routine...

Now, 2 hours later, I still cannot get that stupid song out of my head...

"Luigi is my homeboy"

Get cool videogame T-Shirts at PowerUpTees.com. Get them quickly, before the makers get sued by Nintendo, Namco and Rockstar.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Games from beyond beyond the grave

I am still not entirely sure this isn't some kind of elaborate joke, but Cronosoft seems to offer new games for old computers. And I mean really new (recently programmed) games for really old (more than 20 years old) 8-bit computers, like ZX Spectrum or VIC-20. And they are SELLING THEM for money on the ORIGINAL MEDIA (audiotapes).


I mean: I like it, definitely, but how hardcore do you have to be to have working ZX Spectrum around, with working tape recorder, and BUY new games for it???

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Fuccon Family

Get all the Fuccon Family episodes here (Bittorrent, 250 MB). I guarantee you never saw anything like it (unless you are plastic American living in Japan, of course).