Topics

16

Non-game Programs - The Tinkers' Workshop / Mekboy Gibberish Generator

« on: November 30, 2015, 08:15:05 PM »

Linky
Ork Meks, much like many human mechanics, are not known for telling the absolute truth. Did they just make up that part to put something extra on the bill? I doubt even other mekboys are sure.


The wordy bits are from me, Craig Dolan, Dawn Patrick-Brown, and a few others from the Gorkamorka community.

The code for this isn't particularly difficult but it does several things I've not done before. It pulls files from Google Sheets where there's this document. Three separate TSV files come from there although as they're each a single column they're literally a text file with an entry on each line and nothing more.


From there some PHP converts them to javascript arrays (and JSON) and the JavaScript works with them from there (brought in via PHP includes).


The general idea was to pull in the data as JSON because that's what one is apparently supposed to do. I couldn't find anything that didn't massively overcomplicate things though so I didn't bother. That said there is JSON for each of the three components should anyone want to have a play with them:

• Word A JSON
• Word B JSON
• Phrase JSON

The script should refresh the cache up to once an hour and I think Google Sheets is on a ten minute rotation so additions to the sheet won't show up in the code immediately but eventually will. Dat'z da plan, anyway.

17

General Chatter - The Boozer / Audiobooks

« on: November 05, 2015, 10:46:33 PM »

Some of you may have guessed that I spend a lot of my time on my arse with the rest of me busy doing complicated things with models. While I'm doing that I like to listen to audiobooks.

I'm coming to the end of the currently available audiobooks for the series I've been listening to recently - Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books - and I'm curious to hear some recommendations if you have them.

In the meantime I'm going to talk about books and series I've listened to and what I made of them. I may do this in replies to my own topic just so as to actually get the accursed thing posted.

I'll start of with the series I've just mentioned - Thursday Next.
Currently the series consists of the following titles:

• The Eyre Affair
• Lost in a Good Book
• The Well of Lost Plots
• Something Rotten
• First Among Sequels
• One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
• The Woman Who Died a Lot

It's set in a world that bears both strong similarities to our own and some rather odd differences too. It's not steampunk but there are Zeppelins (but no jet liners), croquet seems to have the popularity of football/soccer, and classic literature is bizarrely popular.

The first book, The Eyre Affair, is, frankly, rather miserable for much of it. I'm not sure why but compared to the others it felt bleak and depressing despite its whimsy. The later books seem to avoid this which I was frankly glad of. I enjoyed Fatherland but it didn't exactly leave me cheerful after a hard day's work and the atmosphere of The Eyre Affair some how had a lot in common with it.

After that we find ourselves on a wild and imaginative journey through the world of books (practically a whole other dimension with all sorts of odd quirks and amusing technologies). That's what I've been enjoying lately.

There's a whole army of Mrs. Danvers clones:


Certain places contain The Mispeling Vyrus and gas masks with dictionary filters must be worn to go near it...
Hopefully you get the idea. It's rather fun.

18

Arts, Crafts, Music & Drama - The Artisans' Guilds / Mad Max: Fury Road

« on: September 23, 2015, 09:49:57 PM »

Perhaps this is the right place?

I would have thought I'd have liked the first three films in this series more but frankly they're only okay. I can't say I enjoyed the first one all that much but it might be worth revisiting. This latest one though. Wow.

I'd been looking forward to it but at best I thought it'd be a fun action film. Instead I found myself paying to see it in the cinema twice and then watching it repeatedly at home. I'm still utterly flabbergasted that such a film can exist in 2015.

Not since Waterworld have I seen a film commit so fully to attempting to realise a post apocalyptic world. Most people don't particularly like Waterworld, I know, but the sets and vehicles in that film were extremely impressive and the reason for its enormous budget (at least as far as I understand things).

The thing that might have been advertised but didn't reach me until after watching was the fact that the vast majority of the effects were practical. There was plenty of compositing to put it all together, certainly, and some things were indeed primarily computer generated, but it wasn't The Hobbit:


Instead it was this sort of thing.

For me the star of the film is the world it takes place in. My interest in the two protagonists is fairly minimal. Instead the amount we learn about the world and the society that exists through being shown and the occasional brief snippet of dialogue is remarkable. I've become so used to films hammering me over the head with exposition (which these days immediately brings this to mind) so to find a film that had a great deal of world building there to anyone interested in looking for it was remarkably refreshing.

19

Dockland Tutorial Base / Copyright, Creative Commons, and Licensing

« on: August 28, 2015, 01:06:48 AM »

This tutorial is aiming to deal with copyright law with a focus on the UK. Lots of this stuff will be relevant in most countries but when in doubt consult a local source. it will also cover licenses in the realm of distributing things non-commercially.

Importantly this tutorial deals with copyright. It does not deal with trade marks, trademarks, patents, registered designs, or anything else IP-related. If you're needing some knowledge about names of products, brand names, and related things like that you're in the wrong place. Those things are trade marks and aren't directly related to copyright.

ONWARDS!


Part 1: Copyright

Let's see whether I can find a good starting point. Copyright is a form of protection. Whoever owns the copyright on something controls certain rights.

I guess we'll look at the "something" of that first. The most important principle here is that what is being protected is the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. If you paint a picture of a unicorn you own that version of it. If I decide to also paint a picture of a unicorn I can - but it has to be my interpretation of the idea.

Ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted.

So, you've painted your unicorn. How do you copyright it?
Well, you sort of already have. There's no registration procedure. You finished the painting and it's now copyrighted. You own the rights to it. You don't need to put a © symbol next to it, although you can if you want.

Copyright is supposed to protect it though, isn't it? From what?

Let's take a look at the 1988 Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act:

The owner of the copyright in a work has, in accordance with the following provisions of this Chapter, the exclusive right to do the following acts in the United Kingdom—

• to copy the work
• to issue copies of the work to the public
• to rent or lend the work to the public
• to perform, show or play the work in public
• to communicate the work to the public
• to make an adaptation of the work or do any of the above in relation to an adaptation

As the copyright owner you can do those things and if anyone else does them you have a case against them. That's what copyright infringement is - doing one of those things without the express permission of the rights holder. You've probably committed copyright infringement any number of times without even knowing it. The law is pretty broad as it stands.

Copyrighted works aren't protected forever though - eventually they enter the Public Domain and can be used by anyone for whatever purpose they choose. The caveat here is that for most works the point at which that happens is 70 years after the creator's death. I don't know who settled on that number but it seems a little excessive to me.

With any luck you've now got the general gist of what copyright is and how it applies to you.

At this point I'd like to provide a little example of a situation that I'll be referring back to in the second part of this guide:

Let's say I've written a book. I've decided to make it an eBook and distribute it on my website. As a bit of a promo I decide to give out free copies for a week. After that I start selling it and take away the free option. Eventually sales slow and as a friendly gesture I start giving it away for free to the handful of people still interested. Fast forward a few years and I decide to write a sequel to my first book. Shortly before release I start selling the first book again.

I'm well within my rights to do all of those things because I am the rights holder (assuming I didn't sell the rights to someone else). If someone decided to share copies of my book with other people they would be committing copyright infringement. The fact that I was giving it away is irrelevant because it was mine to give away. Just because something didn't require payment doesn't mean others can consider it public property.

Worse than that though there are increasingly wide spread automatic tools for detecting this sort of thing. This matters because I might not care that others were sharing my free book. The tools that detect these things don't care about my thoughts as the rights holder! As a result readers could well get into trouble even though I didn't feel they were doing anything wrong!

Part 2: Licensing

Licensing is fairly important to how intellectual property things work. You've probably agreed to some sort of IP license at some point. Most software has one. What you're agreeing to when you accept their terms is essentially a set of conditions within which you can use their work. When you buy a game you aren't buying the rights to it, just a license to have access to it.

The reason this matters to you as a rights holder is that it's the way in which you put your work out there. Unless you stipulate a license all work defaults to the status of "all rights reserved". If I put an eBook online with no additional info others may do things with it (e.g. post big chunks on their blog, make an audiobook of it, etc..). I'd be well within my rights to chase them down as without further information they should have assumed that it was not clear to use.

If I'd stated that it was available under some licensing terms then they could look at the license and then make a decision to use it based on those terms.

There's lots of different licenses out there though and some of them are downright confusing. When it comes to distributing content commercially I suggest you do further research into licenses and see whether you need one. This guide is more about how to release things for free whilst controlling how they're used.

Part 3: Creative Commons

Creative Commons have put together a set of licenses that are rather handy. They've sorted out the legal side so all we have to do is pick the things that matter to us and stipulate that our work is under that license.

Here's their license picker page. The licenses they show there aren't the only ones available though so some digging may be required if you want to use an older version. The Wikipedia page has some useful information on the subject.

Choose a license, mark the work in some way, done!

The end result is that if someone wants to share the file with their friends they can and are legally allowed to do so. You also have the option of allowing them to make derivative works using your material, or remix it in some way.

The only thing to remember with these licenses is that they are irrevocable. Once you've released a work under a license you cannot undo it. You can make it available under other licenses and you're not obligated to continue distributing the CC version. The reason this matters is that if I receive a file marked "Creative Commons attribution" and the author's name I should be safe to assume that the license still applies.  If the license could be revoked then this wouldn't work and we'd be spending all our time trying to find out what the rights holders feel like this fortnight!


With any luck this guide was helpful. Feel free to post questions but bear in mind that I'm not a lawyer. I've just been doing my research and bothering the IPO in my spare time.

20

Arts, Crafts, Music & Drama - The Artisans' Guilds / Electronics, hot wires, and this guy.

« on: August 21, 2015, 10:27:41 PM »

Disclaimer: I'm still fairly new to this sort of thing and I've only just managed to solder something that wasn't a complete pig's ear. With that in mind let's dive in to what I've been working on in my spare time.

Many years ago I got my grubby meathooks on a book Games Workshop used to publish "How to Make Wargames Terrain". Not the flashy 2004 version mind you - the 1996 version. In all honesty I found it fairly worthless and uninspiring, especially in a time before the kind of tutorials we have access online today. There were a few nuggets of wisdom in there though such as the existence of this tool:

(From the original book)

Now I don't know about you but I'm not good at spending medium amounts of cash on myself. I'll save up for something expensive and buy it, I'll buy the odd small treat for up to about £7.50 but anything above that just feels a bit too much for just me. Well hot wire cutters fire into that price range (plus the cost of 4.5V batteries if one goes for the cheaper battery operated ones).

These days I'm older and I've got a lot of odds and sods lying around. One of these things is an ancient computer power supply. We're talking 140W.

It's on its own though so there's no way to turn it on. The kettle lead is plugged in but without a case button wired into it there's no on switch. Well that is at least easy to fix:


The black leads are all ground. There's only one green wire and grounding it immediately turns on the PSU. Sorted!

Right, then what's next? Well we've got lots of connectors that have both red and yellow wires. The red ones are 5V rails while the yellows are 12V. Oh and before we go on these are DC. The PSU's job is to convert AC input to DC output. 12V DC is, for the most part, safe. Probably unwise to handle it with wet hands, admittedly, but under normal conditions skin resistance prevents 12V being enough of a gradient to be dangerous.

The next component is NiChrome wire. A few metres can be had on eBay for bugger all. I bought the smallest amount I could - a metre of 0.5mm stuff - for £1.50 including postage. Man, making stuff was so much more expensive before eBay.

Ideally the wire for the hot wire cutter needs to be kept under tension. It's fairly stiff stuff but as we all remember from physics classes: metal that heats up expands. Hmm.

So I needed a device that could:

• Keep the wire under tension even as it expands
• Have plenty of safe handholds
• Not melt when if exposed to a little stray heat
• Take up as little space as possible

Lots of people make these using PVC pipe but I haven't got any that's the right size so that idea fell at the first hurdle. Wood would work though, assuming it was reasonably tough. I took a look in a nearby shed and found an extremely dead deckchair. The canvas had rotted off and it was riddle with woodworm and rot. Luckily some parts of it were still dry and reasonably tough.

A bit of sawing, drilling, and wiring later and I had a pterodactyl!


The rubber band keeps the wire under tension and the rest of the design allows it to be collapsed when not in use. In theory I could also mount a longer wire if I felt like it. Attaching one wire to a 12V rail and the other to a ground rail provided me with something that happily chews through even thick insulation foam:


It actually runs a little hotter than I'd like and so I'm considering testing it on the 5V rail to see whether that makes any difference when cutting simple polystyrene. Its current heat level is fine for thicker foam but it goes through white expanded polystyrene like it's not even there - not so good if one doesn't have a steady hand. A switch between the two might be a good addition if that works.

21

General Chatter - The Boozer / Podcasts

« on: April 21, 2015, 04:01:41 PM »

I don't know about you guys but one of my favourite things to listen to are podcasts. My listening habits tend to reflect my geeky nature but occasionally there's a bit of a wildcard.

Currently I listen to:

• Press Play to Save (A rather friendly American show focused on video gaming)
• The Giant bombcast (having listened to the guys when they still worked for GameSpot as The Hotspot)
• Upvoted by Reddit
• The AskHistorians Podcast
• Linux Voice
• Bad Voltage (I used to be an avid listener of LUGRadio before it ended and have been looking for something to replace it. I found it today - a show that's two of the main guys from LUGRadio - back together again.) (edit: One of the two new guys they got for this show is an anti-vaccination person. Unsubscribed.)

There's a few others I listen to less regularly like The Sporkful, Radiolab, Radio 4's Documentary of the Week, and Ending the Sexual Dark Age.

How about you guys?

22

Food Discussion - The Jolly Boar Kitchen / Making yogurt

« on: April 17, 2015, 01:48:41 PM »

'allo all!

I've probably mentioned this before but it's been a while - does anyone else make their own yogurt?

During the colder months I don't bother as the missus prefers porridge or similar but now that it's at last relaxed a little (I can feel my toes!) it's time again. I must admit that we cheat somewhat - we use an EasiYo maker to do the job:



That is to say we use the pots and water bath. Sometimes the missus picks out a particularly novel starter pack but the rest of the time I culture it from a teaspoon of the last batch.

This took me a while to get right and for the moment I can actually recall how I did it. While I remember I might as well write it down!

1. I use about a litre of semi-skimmed milk (although I've succeeded using soy milk from UHT-style packs before) and put it in a plastic bowl of some description. It doesn't need to be in a bowl but it does help it cool and prevents it bubbling over (always a plus...).

2. Next step - into the microwave for, oh, say ten minutes? I generally feel it's done when it's been hot enough to form a little skin.

3. Onwards! Let it cool down to a reasonable temperature (I wish I had a thermometer but alas I do not). Luke warm should be fine - not hot.

4. A spoonful of a previous batch (or store bought) goes in. More doesn't seem to actually help, oddly, if anything it slows it down. Strange.
Into the water bath for the next, say, eight hours? It varies. Sometimes it needs longer, other times less.

5. The result should be a lump of curds floating in whey. Looks kinda gross. If not add some more hot water to the bath and leave it in a while longer.

Just a little bit longer:


If upon opening it smells fermented and horrible then I'm afraid something went wrong - perhaps the container wasn't clean enough, for example.

6. Strain off most of the whey. It can be handy for all sorts of things - look it up! I like to use it to cook rice in.

7. Give the rest a bit of a stir (or whisk) and you're good to go. Fruit, jam, or whatever else can be added at this stage.


With that lot written I'm going to see whether this first batch has gone well!

23

Fox Box / Casting and sculpting for Fox Box and myself

« on: February 28, 2015, 07:38:02 PM »

I've been running my own little business for a while now - Fox Box. It started out as a bitz company specialising in Orks and whilst I don't intend to stop selling other kits as bitz I started to get interested in making my own parts. Lacking the knowledge and equipment to do my own casting I had a friend help me with casting. That was all well and good until I moved away from Edinburgh. No longer could I walk to his flat and pick up copies.

So over the last few months I've put together my own casting rig:


It has a vacuum pump for pulling a strong vacuum and a hefty compressor to quickly bring it up to 60 PSI. As long as I design my mould correctly, use the right amount of resin, and don't dilly dally I can get perfect casts. That is to say no bubbles, no blisters, barely any mould lines (and often none at all - it depends on the mould design).

Here's the first mould I made, a copy of a sculpt I did:


It worked but turned out to be needlessly cautious. The amount of sprue is totally unnecessary for my technique, that sort of kidney.
Here's a copy from that mould:


Here's a shot of a couple of copies from a different mould design:


They were cast together in a single mould but it has its own issues (extracting from it is time sensitive - too soon and stuff bends, too late and it snaps) so I'm planning on creating a replacement for it in a bit.

More recently I've been attempting to scale up the copying of these parts:



The problem with casting is that I can do lots of resin at once, assuming I have moulds for it. Unfortunately my pressure chamber is round. It's a bit tricky to tetris stuff together and it slows things down. That might sound like a minor annoyance but 30 seconds makes all the difference when the resin only has 2 - 4 minutes until it starts to cure (the range depends on a variety of factors including temperature). If I want to degass the resin and then put pressure on it I need about two minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Sooo, if I'm faffing about pouring resin into lots of little moulds that can easily take a minute to a minute and a half. Erk!

The solution? As with many other things in life, the answer is cake.




Well, there's also the side effect of how firmly the silicone and parts were stuck in there:


I've yet to put together moulds for the heads and weapons but they should be comparatively easy.

24

General Gaming - The Arcade / Reimplementations and "HD" remakes

« on: December 11, 2014, 02:48:58 AM »

I'm not really sure how to turn this into a discussion topic without forcing it but I thought I'd share something that I (mostly) like in modern gaming. Many classic games have become significantly more portable through reimplementations. The big example being, of course, ScummVM. I've not actually used ScummVM all that much but I'm always amazed when I look at its download list. I don't even know what a "Tizen" package is! (Turns out it's some variant of Linux, I found myself compelled to check)

What I have used is ResidualVM (a play on "Residue" as the engine it primarily reimplements is the GrimE engine). Being one of the lucky few with an original copy of Grim Fandango it's a joy to be able to play it on Linux, OSX, or whatever else. I even had a go at getting it compiled for the Raspberry Pi!

Something I've considered playing with now that it's reaching a level of maturity is CorsixTH - a reimplementation of Theme Hospital. This brings me to another point - reimplementations can introduce stuff that was either left out or not planned for the original. The ability to have the game remember which extras the player normally adds to a room being an excellent example. A map editor being another!

There's also the fun option to replace the original graphics. I'd probably stick with the originals but the option to change it up can be fairly handy as time goes by and low-res artwork becomes a style choice rather than a necessity.

Admittedly there's also bad reworkings. I bought Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD in the hope if getting a polished experience. Instead I got something built in the Unreal engine that seemed to have been created by people who hadn't played the originals. There's even purchasable DLC (and not cheap compared to the base game - £3.99 vs. £6.99!) to add back in the revert move that was introduced in THPS3 (allowing for much longer combos). Ugh.

There we go, have a topic.

25

Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Space warfare with a focus on the effects of FTL on tactics

« on: September 01, 2014, 11:02:24 PM »

I don't see any other topics in this section (other than the announcement), just subforums, but hopefully this is the right place.

I'm currently trying to figure out a way to create a tabletop game that uses asymmetric information.
Essentially it's going to be a space warfare game that tries to take into account light lag, FTL micro jumps, and so forth.

At the moment I'm thinking that each ship model will have its own (small) deck of command cards. A card must be placed for each ship every turn even if it's only a blank one (of course the other player won't know it's blank).

I'm considering having some sort of beacon on the playfield that pings the whole battlefield every X number of turns but I'm still thinking about the concept itself.

Ideally I also want to allow for smaller skirmishes between tiny attack craft but I'm not sure yet whether that'll fit in.