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Of Carbon and Silicon
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
How's this for a title...

BrainFarts: Random Thoughts had by Spiny McSpleen

Actually, "BrainFarts" was to be the name of what is now "The Mind's Rubbish Bin".  In fact, the very first trivia page I had on the site (back in the "Jeff Perry's Nifty Stuff" days) was actually called "BrainFarts".  Eventually, I decided I liked "The Mind's Rubbish Bin" better. The concept of one's mind having a rubbish bin where it casts off the unnecessary minutiae was quite humourous to me.  I guess that makes me The Mind's Dustman, since I empty the mind's rubbish bin.  Of course, I could also be The Mind's Dumpster-Diver, since I reuse the cast-offs from the mind's rubbish bin.  Or maybe I'm The Mind's Creepy and Somewhat Depressing Neighbour... you know, the type who always steals your rubbish when you've put it out for the bin men.

Anyway, let's forget about "BrainFarts", shall we (no one likes a flatulent brain).  Let's get on to the entry for today.
In today's Spiny McSpleen-related news...
>I'm going nowhere fast in composing my minuet.
>I've made my studio wall for The Sims 2 -- covered in index-cards, stickynotes, and pictures of stuff. I shall need to share it sometime. It's nifty!
>I've created a proper ocarina sound for ZOROASTER-2. Prior to that, it only had the piece-of-rubbish GM2 sound that you can't edit.  This ocarina sounds like the one from the N64 Zelda games.
>I re-arranged my Incredible Crash Dummies figures in my curio cabinet.
>I sent my nifty hat to the dry-cleaners and won't get it back until Friday.
>I made a conductor's baton out of an old flagstick.

Can you tell that I have nothing to write about today?

Oh!  But it is October!  That's nifty, too.


Posted by theniftyperson at 5:05 PM CDT
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
The Sims page coming along slowly

Well, good news today in the world of nifty webpages made by Spiny McSpleen.  I've finished the HTML for my new webpage about The Sims.  Now, all I need to do is finish making the downloads and then find a few items I don't need anymore to delete so I can shoehorn the downloads into my Tripod account.

In other news, I have done something I'd never thought I'd do... I threw two Nintendo 64 cartridges into the rubbish bin.  Not one, but two.  Of course, they were both as bricked as is technologically possible, but, for a man who keeps the receipts from the purchase of all of his videogames and then posts them on his studio wall for posterity, that's significant!
The two cartridges are, of course, my GameShark Pro v.3.3 and my copy of 007 The World is not Enough.  I'm considering junking my Action Replay for GameCube, as well.  Of course, that one still works... I just don't want to risk it going the way of my GameShark.  Maybe someone will want it and will buy it from me...


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:03 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:13 AM CDT
Blast! Late by one minute!

The actual entry for today is located above this one.

Did you know...?
The GoldenEye 007 game engine was used again in the Nintendo 64 game, Perfect Dark.  Hackers have even been able to substitute levels in GoldenEye 007 with levels from Perfect Dark and vice-versa.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:00 AM CDT
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Oh, yes... how quaint...

So, I'm playing 007 The World is not Enough on my legacy console yesterday.  I'm about halfway through the Midnight Departure level when, suddenly, my game freezes, the onscreen picture glitches up, and then goes dark.  Of course, I'm using my GameShark so I can use a weapon that I hacked (I call it the "Sniper P2K", but I digress).
What immediately comes to mind is, "Oh, blast -- another EA game gone irregular."  So, I switch the console off, wait for about twenty seconds, then switch it back on.  It was here that I discovered that my GameShark has wiped itself clean!

No game selected
0 Codes Available
0 Games Supported

I switch the console off again and take out the GameShark.  I put 007 The World is not Enough into the console alone and switched it back on.  What am I greeted with?  Nothing.  A black screen.
I try it again -- same effect.

So, the bottom line is, my GameShark erased itself and my 007 The World is not Enough cartridge!  It's either a programming glitch (which can easily happen, considering its primary function) or, taking a more sinister route, a Logic Bomb.

You know what an Easter Egg is, right?  No, no, not the things that the spectre of a giant rabbit supposedly breaks into a house to leave for small children on Easter.  It's a bonus item that was intentionally placed into a software application by the programmers -- usually an inside joke or a cross-reference.  Like the portraits of Mario and Luigi in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or the Klobb in GoldenEye 007.
Well, the Easter Egg has a mean and nasty cousin -- the Logic Bomb.  It, too, is an unexpected thing that the programmers will put into a software application... only, a Logic Bomb will wreak general havoc upon the system where the application is installed.  Logic Bombs are usually programmed to occur on a certain date at a certain time -- say, Saturday, 27-September-2008, at 3:57 PM.

If anyone else had difficulties with their GameShark Pro for the Nintendo 64 yesterday, then I suspect a Logic Bomb at work.  If not, well, just an error in programming.  When there are only four programmers on staff who work out of the head programmer's cellar, I don't imagine one can expect quality.

Either way, I shall need to find another 007 The World is not Enough.  So much for the Sniper P2K.  Blimey, that thing was nifty!

It's a bloody long time for a Logic Bomb to lie in wait, though.  The GameShark Pro was released in 1998. Ten years later, it finally goes into effect?  Rather unlikely in retrospect.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:15 AM CDT
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Those ruddy pop-up adverts!

Now that I have a separate blog for Completely Different stuff, that frees up Of Carbon and Silicon for my usual complaining!  Why do I find that exciting?  Oh well, no matter.

Anyway, if you've been on the Internet at all (including this website, unfortunately), you will have noticed the sheer volume of websites that make use of pop-up advertisements.  You know, those things that suddenly appear by the dozens and make your system stack overload.
I'm all for capitalism, and that means advertising so as to get the point across.  Pop-up adverts are like billboards that you pass on the street.  Er... actually, they're nothing like that...
Ah! They're like mass mailings through the post.  If you don't like what is being advertised, or you find the whole thing to be really annoying, you crumple it up into a jolly nice wad and toss it in the rubbish.
Similarly, when a pop-up advert appears on your computer screen, you can either choose to follow the link that it provides (at the risk of your computer's well-being), or you click the friendly red "X" in the top-right corner of the advertisement.

Well, here's what I don't understand.  Why do many of the pop-ups appear, then very suddenly hide behind the main window?  That's not advertising, that's intentional annoyance.  Like the kid in school who spits wads of paper at you from across the room.  The paper doesn't have anything of worth written upon it -- its only purpose in life is to antagonise the person upon whose head it lands.
I mean, paper can be called a "pamphlet" and be handed out by people who are trying to make you aware of something -- in particular, they are making you aware of what is written and/or printed on the leaf of paper.  Spit-wads are also made of paper, but they don't perform any practical function.

It's the same with pop-up adverts.  The ones that quickly go hide behind the browser don't perform any essential task -- they just annoy the recipient.  Hence, pop-up blockers.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.  Tune in tomorrow when I talk about something else!


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:47 AM CDT
Friday, 26 September 2008
New blog dedicated to "Completely Different"

I've decided that I need to separate the everyday, run-of-the-mill Spiny McSpleen stuff from the And Now for Something Completely Different stuff.  Call it disestablishmentarianism, I suppose...

Anyway, the new Completely Different blog is called The Spam & Egg Times, and it can be found here.  I'll leave all of the Completely Different stuff that I've already posted around Of Carbon and Silicon where it is, but any new entries related to Completely Different are, henceforth, going onto The Spam & Egg Times.

I don't plan on updating the Times as much as Of Carbon and Silicon, but I plan to uphold my promise to write in this here blog (rather than that there blog) everyday.  I'll only write in The Spam & Egg Times when something's going on with Completely Different.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CDT
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Working on a new page

On Monday, I mentioned that I've been working on a new page for the website.  This page is about The Sims... it's actually the page I said I would upload last November.  Work has been slow, but I've made several prototypes of this page -- ones that are mostly information, ones that are mostly custom content and little information, ones that are all custom content and no information, ones that are a bit of both.  The final cut will be a jolly good balance of both information and custom content.  'Cos, you can't have a webpage about The Sims without making stuff for people to download -- to quote Gordon from Thomas & Friends, "It isn't wrong, but we just don't do it."
Unfortunately, if I'm going to make available anything for download on this page, I'll need to economise and consolidate elsewhere on the site.  Right now, I have two megabytes left in my Tripod account.  As of right now, the two greatest memory hogs are the GoldenEye 007 page and the Completely Different page.  I think I can stand to leave the GoldenEye page where it is, but I shall need to do something with the Completely Different page.  I was planning on making a separate website for And Now for Something Completely Different anyway, so I think I'll end up having to do that.

In other news, the KZUM membership drive is coming up (what? You thought the ".org" in their URL stood for "good organisational skills"?).  As such, I pledge to play as much music as I can during the drive.  You know how on PBS, the on-air fundraisers drone on and on and on... well, KZUM isn't like that... so much.  Anyway, And Now for Something Completely Different is only on once during the two week fund-drive, so I'm planning on bringing out the A-List stuff for my show.  The best of the best!  You'll look forward to that, I expect.  I figure, since you're going to be advertised to on a constant basis, you'll want to be justly rewarded for your time (and money, I hope... er, let's save the spiels for the fund-drive, eh Spiny?)


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, 25 September 2008 12:07 AM CDT
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Spiny McSpleen's Pre-Show Random Trivia

Here's today's bit of random trivia...

On average, a human will inadvertently eat eight spiders throughout the course of their lifetime while they are asleep.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, 24 September 2008 5:52 PM CDT
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Spiny McSpleen's Pre-Show Random Trivia

Here is today's bit of random trivia...

In the 13th episode of HomestarRunner.com's cartoon feature, Marzipan's Answering Machine, Marzipan states that she is "probably outside eating some dirt or something".  Dirt is an occasional craving had by pregnant women. Melissa Palmer, Marzipan's voice actress, was pregnant at the time of this episode's release.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, 22 September 2008 11:55 PM CDT
Monday, 22 September 2008
Today's random rambling

Oh, blast! I missed yesterday's post and I nearly missed today's, as well.  In my defence, though, I'm trying to simultaneously work on the playlist for my upcoming show and a new page for the website.
As such, today's post is very brief.  In fact, the only thing I can manage, as far as blog entries go, until Thursday is random bits of trivia.  Here go today's...

In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Sachi Matsumoto provides not only the voice of Link, but those of Maggie and Prince Komali, as well.


Posted by theniftyperson at 11:36 PM CDT
Saturday, 20 September 2008
The Sims Build Mode music

As you may or may not know, the music in The Sims (the first one) was composed mainly by Jerry Martin.  From what his website leads me to believe, the piano music from Build Mode was entirely improvised.  Improvising is where you sit at the piano and play something from your own head (it's not written down and it didn't previously exist).

Someone asked about the Build Mode music from The Sims on The Sims 2's online forum a bit ago.  I answered, thus...

Oh! That's one of The Sims (1) Build Mode songs, isn't it?
Unfortunately, I don't think there is sheet music for that particular song. 
The information on Jerry Martin's website leads me to believe that all of the Build Mode songs were improvised (Jerry Martin composed much of the music in The Sims [1]).

The person's response was one of amazement, insofar as the music was completely improvisational.
The weird thing is, when I learned of the Build Mode score's lack of paper, I wasn't really impressed, simply because I improvise stuff on the piano on a regular basis.

I'm not bragging... I just find it interesting that what I, as a musician, see as a trick of the trade, someone else sees it as the niftiest thing on the face of the earth! 

Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?


Posted by theniftyperson at 11:53 PM CDT
Thursday, 18 September 2008
No entry today

Sorry, but I don't much feel like writing today.  Just so you don't waste your time, having come here to find a distinct lack of my usual doctoral theses or manifestos, here's a random bit of trivia for you.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were made using a modified version of the Super Mario 64 game engine.


Posted by theniftyperson at 9:05 PM CDT
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Ask Spiny! ...or not.

Great...  Ruddy Tripod isn't working properly today. 
I used to have an additional Ask Spiny! post here, but when I went to fix the French translation of one of my replies, Tripod replaced the whole entry with "null".  I can't remember what I had here and I delete all of the Ask Spiny! e-mails I get once I've answered them, so I can't repair this entry. 

If you sent me an Ask Spiny! e-mail between the dates of September 1st and September 16th, please send me your question again so I can fix this entry.  Thank you muchly!

Blimey... shows me to edit entries in the Blog Manager... henceforth, I edit entries strictly from Of Carbon and Silicon, itself.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, 17 September 2008 3:03 AM CDT
Monday, 15 September 2008
Better than fixed-width fonts? Automatic entries!
Now Playing: "Murder Mystery" by J Sebastian Perry

I never noticed this before, in the two years that I've been doing Of Carbon and Silicon -- if I change the date of the entry to sometime in the future, Tripod won't post it until the specified date and time!  This way, if I have any ideas for future entries, but I don't want to post again until the next day, I can compose the entry, then specify when I want Tripod to post it for me!  No more missed entries!  In fact, I wrote this entry just a few minutes after yesterday's entry!  That'll mess with your head, eh?

Anyway, I was talking about my song, Murder Mystery, last time.  Well, I found a MIDI that I made of the original NWC.  I don't know how the MIDI escaped deletion when the NWC is lost forever in parts of other files, but I did find it.  Here it is...
Murder Mystery
This was the theme song to a murder mystery (surprising, eh?) that I wrote at the same time as the song.  Loosely based on a 1980-something cinema version of Cluedo and various Inspector Poirot novels, all of the characters in the mystery were inexplicably meeting a philanthropist at his mansion in Staffordshire.  I won't bore you -- at any rate, I scrapped the story because I couldn't come up with a plausible reason why everyone was gathered at the house and that the murder, itself, was too thinly veilled and the only way I could add complexity was to introduce more characters.
Anyway, pay no mind to the rather bland chords in the song.  I was only 13 when I wrote it.

In other news today -- I learned yesterday that Don laFontaine died.  Apparently due to complications from a collapsed lung, he died on September the 1st. 
His was the most expensive voice in all of show-business.  He announced for, literally, thousands of movie trailers and television promos.  His last work, to my knowledge, was as the voice-over for some Sprint Communications adverts.
You know, by the time I did my September 10th episode of Completely Different, Don had already been dead for nine days.  If I had known, I'd have said something on the air about it.  Ah well, there's always next week.

Murder Mystery
Copyright © 2008 SebasTECH, Ltd.
Written in 2001 by J Sebastian Perry


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, 15 September 2008 2:57 AM CDT
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Great... so much for "daily updates"

I'm not really keeping my promise to update the site daily, am I?  I missed Thursday and yesterday.  That's not nifty!

Anyway, onto today's update.
I've begun work on writing a minuet that I've had in my head for a while.  A minuet is sort of like a waltz, only slower.
It will be my greatest musical endeavour yet, as I intend to devote an entire notebook to it.  Thus far, I've only finished one page (of course, I only started it today), but I plan to do two pages or more tomorrow.  I'm debating whether or not to sequence it in MIDI and put it up on the website... so long as you promise not to steal it, I suppose I could debut it here.  More likely, though, I'll record it with ZOROASTER-1 and play it during my next show.

Anyway, I thought that the music notebook I had selected to write the song in was empty, but it turns out that I had written on the first page, God knows how long ago.  I tried playing some of it, but it was nothing but atonal garbage.  I think it was supposed to be some kind of variation on the James Bond theme, but I wager it would have been more easily recognisable before it got destroyed by my juvenile imagination.
Not everything I wrote when I was younger was rubbish, though.  When I was 13, I wrote a piece called Murder Mystery which doesn't sound all bad.  I lost the original NWC file I wrote the song in, but I rewrote it back in July, on paper this time.  I'm fairly certain I have a MIDI of Murder Mystery someplace on my computer... I'll have to look around for it.


Posted by theniftyperson at 1:34 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, 14 September 2008 1:53 AM CDT
Friday, 12 September 2008
Seriously... what part of "mandatory evacuation" did you not understand?

I don't bloody believe this.  There are actually fools who are staring down that new hurricane... what was it again?  "Ike", that's right (there've been so many, I've lost track).  All of the meteorologists are saying the same thing -- Ike will make landfall on Houston, Texas, as a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.  That's 120 miles per hour of maximum sustained winds!
Imagine an EF2 tornado -- 120 mp/h to 130 mp/h straightline winds.  Got it in your mind?  Good... now expand the circumference of the base by 'roundabout 700 miles, add sheets of horizontal rain and stir vigourously.  That's a Category 3 hurricane.

Why do I care about hurricanes all of a sudden?  I mean, I live in Nebraska -- a state that's about as protected from hurricanes as is geographically possible.
I was on The Sims 2 forums a bit ago.  A forum user, who shall remain nameless, stated that they were using hurricane, Ike, as an opportunity to play The Sims 2 indefinitely. 
I'm going to gloss over the fact that staying behind when everyone else has evacuated is a grave error in judgement -- that's a given, as I've already explained.
By running your computer (a non-essential household device) during a major, catastrophic event, such as this, does nothing but sap power from the city's power-grid -- power that can be used to sustain the function of medical devices or scientific instruments.  "But, Spiny," you say, "Ike's just going to knock the power-grid offline anyway."  That is so, true enough.  But then, assuming you have a generator, running your computer from your generator is wasting power that you may very well need later.  You know, like, when FEMA forgets that you exist and you're left without any water, food, or power for three weeks.

I certainly hope this forum user is not located in Galveston.  All NOAA computer models suggest that Galveston will be under 6-10 feet of water when all is said and done.


Posted by theniftyperson at 1:39 AM CDT
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Completely Different's third episode

All right, then.  The third regular episode of And Now for Something Completely Different is now over with.  And I managed to pull it off even with one of the CD players out of commission.  Plus, I got to bust out my Aragog impression.  You know, the bally great spider that lives in the Dark Forest at the edge of Hogwarts' grounds in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Anyhow, I debuted my new GoldenEye 007 soundtrack today, playing the themes to the Facility, Surface 1, Bunker 1, and Silo.  Also, I'm going to start archiving my playlists and putting them up on the Completely Different page.

My next show is on September the 24th.  There was talk at some stage of my filling in for the chap who has my timeslot on Thursday again tomorrow, but that didn't materialise.


Posted by theniftyperson at 2:17 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, 12 September 2008 2:28 AM CDT
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
There should be a law... wait -- there is!

I said I was going to stop complaining for a while, but this directly involves me, so it's exempt.

See, I was going through the Videogame Music Archive one day.  I'll contribute my new videogame MIDIs to that site whenever I have any to contribute. 
Anyway, I was in the "Gameboy Advance" [sic] section, looking for... something -- I can't quite recall what it was. I came across the MIDIs (well, MIDI... just one) for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets -- I had contributed the one and only song from that game, the Shop theme.  However, I noticed that something was amiss.  I looked over at the contributor's name and noticed that it was not "J. Sebastian Perry", but rather "Dingodile" (talking of portmanteaux -- "dingo" and "crocodile", presumably). 
I looked at the info TXT and discovered that this "Dingodile" had uploaded it ages after I had.  I don't know how it came to pass that my original upload had disappeared, but someone probably in Bordeaux, France (given the trace I ran on the originating IP address) had uploaded it again.  The exact same file -- no edits had been made to the MIDI, itself. The file is exactly the same as what I had uploaded, right down to the information I had entered in the MIDI comments.

Now, either this individual wants to be caught in a blatant act of plagiarism, or they're so dense that they forgot to edit the file before sending it off.  Either way, they classify as a "dumb criminal".  You know -- the type that would write a ransom note on the back of a personal cheque.

Anyway, they've still claimed credit for my work.  I worked for months on picking out the song by playing notes on ZOROASTER-1 and comparing it to the song in the game, itself.  That was my very first videogame MIDI, actually -- I was 14 at the time -- which makes it all the more unfair.


Posted by theniftyperson at 1:51 AM CDT
Monday, 8 September 2008
Counteracting the Chatspeak Trend

83<4u53 <#475|*34|<  #45 ru|\| 50 r4|\/||*4|\|7 7#47 17 <4|\|\|07
83 570|*|*3|>, 4|\||> 83<4u53 17 15 |>34|> <0|\/|\/|0|\|, 1 7#1|\||<
1 5#4ll \/\/r173 7#3 0<<4510|\|4l 3|\|7ry 3|\|71r3ly 1|\| L337!
Y0u |<|\|0\/\/, 70 50r7 0|= <0u|\|73r4<7 7#3 3|=|=3<75.
4<7u4lly, 4ll 1'|\/| |*r0|34|3ly |>01|\|6 15 \/\/4571|\|6 |\/|y 71|\/|3...
1 |\/|34|\|, \/\/#0 7#3 |>3\/1l <4|\| 3\/3|\| |3361|\| 70 7#1|\||<
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4<7u4lly, 1 \/3ry |\/|u<# |>0u|37 7#47 7#15 15 <0u|\|73r4<71n6
4|\|y7#1|\|6... 1 ;u57 #4\/3 |\|07#1|\|6 |33773r 70 54y.

Incidentally, if you could read that, translate it and send it to me. Why? Well, why not?


Posted by theniftyperson at 2:00 AM CDT
Sunday, 7 September 2008
A Spiny McSpleen fan-club?

You know what's even niftier than fixed-width fonts?  Fan-clubs. Good old, obsessed stalker-spawning fan-clubs.

There's this cartoon on the Homestar Runner site where Strong Bad discusses the plusses and minuses of fan-clubs.  Here, he reveals that there is a Strong Bad E-Mail fan-club, though fictional, called the "Deleteheads" (a play on "deleted" -- a word for which Strong Bad has a close affinity, second only to the word "crap"), which is headed, "in a chocolate-covered bit of Stockholm Syndrome-esque irony", by his younger brother, Strong Sad.
Anyway, it got me thinking.  Somewhere out there, there may very well be a Spiny McSpleen fan-club... say, perhaps, "TheNIFTYPeople", after my URL.  For thirty to sixty minutes per week, they gather round a table to discuss what's going on with the website or to decipher the hidden meanings behind all of the cryptic stuff I've written in Of Carbon and Silicon. Maybe they send questions in to Ask Spiny!, then go all giddy with otaku excitement when I answer one of their questions.

There might be an entire webring (because they haven't moved with the times) of Spiny McSpleen admirers!  Just because I haven't found them with Google doesn't necessarily mean they aren't there.  For years, my website was totally invisible to search engines for a lack of meta-tags.

Actually, fan-clubs are nifty, sure.  But, what's even niftier than that?  Hyphens.  More than a comma, but not quite a semi-colon.


Posted by theniftyperson at 12:49 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, 7 September 2008 1:21 AM CDT

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