According to various sources who have posted blog entries and news articles to the James Bond page on Facebook, it seems as though Mr. Bond has finally been defeated. After decades of eluding death by SPECTRE, Jaws, and other freelance ne'er-do-wells with messianic complexes, Agent 007 may finally have met his death by the very company that made him great: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Evidently, MGM has run afoul of the economy crash (made with pride in the USA, from the same brilliant minds what brought you trust-funds, Ponzi schemes, and trans-fats) -- to that end, they've postponed the next Bond film indefinitely.

Now, don't get me wrong -- it's unfortunate and all, that the world's greatest action hero for half a century has to suffer the decisions of a few greedy bastards in New York City -- but, I don't believe for a fraction of a second that the Bond series will simply fade away.  Established by Ian Fleming in 1953, the James Bond franchise has infiltrated the very fabric of society.  Go up to a random person on the street of any age group and say, "James Bond."  Some will regale you with their favourite line from a Bond film (usually, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" from Goldfinger), some will start whistling Monty Norman's James Bond Theme, some will tell you how many kills they're notorious for in GoldenEye 007 multiplayer.
It's like Star Trek. Go up to another random person and do the Vulcan salute. "Live long and prosper," they'll say.  The Star Trek series is so intertwined with society that new technological advances are based on equipment seen on a Star Trek show.  James Bond, of course, is not like that. The stuff that comes out of Q Branch is generally too specialised to have a productive use in real everyday life.
The point is, Star Trek hadn't had a television programme or a film for years until J.J. Abrams comes out with a new Star Trek film, expected to be followed in a year or so by a sequel.  Before that, the CBS situation comedy, The Big Bang Theory, is built somewhat around Trek references (e.g. "rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock").

In other words, I'm unconvinced that the James Bond series is as fragile as people make it out to be.  Remember, there was a six-year hiatus between License to Kill and GoldenEye. During that time, the old cliché was absolutely right, absence did, in fact, make the heart grow fonder.  There was a greater turnout in cinemas for GoldenEye than there was for either of the Dalton-era Bond films.  After all, MGM had been trying to sign Pierce Brosnan as James Bond since A View to a Kill, but his contractual obligations to Remington Steele prevented it.
But, fortunately, just in case anyone has any lingering doubts, the indefinite hiatus between Quantum of Solace and whatever Bond #23 might be has an extra card to play -- one that License to Kill didn't have.

Videogames.

Certainly, there were computer games based on James Bond, but none were as dramatically successful as Rareware's GoldenEye 007.  That game launched the Bond franchise into orbit of the gaming industry, alongside Mario and The Legend of Zelda.  Needless to say, it brought new popularity to the first-person shooter genre for game developers, trying to capitalise on GoldenEye's success (there probably wouldn't be a Halo series, were it not for GoldenEye 007).
Putting it another way, the Bond series will weather the economic crisis through the popularity of its multimedia ventures. People will watch the James Bond Ultimate Collection on DVD and play the Bond games until the next film is released.  Then, they will see the film, buy the film, play the games, watch the other films, until Bond #24 is released.

To answer the question posed in the title of this entry:
Has James Bond met his death by MGM?

No.

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:04 PM CDT

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Happy Mario Day!  Wowser... it's unreal to think that 364.5 days could pass so quickly!  I don't recall much about Mario Day '09, but I remember Mario Day '08 as though it were yesterday. I had purchased Super Smash Bros. Brawl the day before and couldn't wait all the way until Mario Day (all 13.7 hours) to play it, so I spent the majority of the evening in The Subspace Emissary, trying to unlock Luigi.  The next day, I decided to take the easy route and play Vs. mode a lot until I got him.

So, why is today "Mario Day"?  Well, to continue the tradition of explaining it every year, here is why it's Mario Day.  "March" is sometimes abbreviated, "Mar" -- this is the tenth day of March. On an old milk carton in my refrigerator, it reads "USE BY MAR10".  See? "MAR10" -- Mario in Leet (not in |\/|4[} 1337 ["mad leet"], just plain old Leet).

Even though there is no month called "Luvember" with one hundred sixty-one days (becoming "LU161"), there is a Luigi Day. It comes directly after Mario day, March the 11th.

Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CST

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In the previous entry, I provided a partial listing of all of my Super Mario 64 Mario recolouring codes.  The principle behind each of the recolours is the hexadecimal colour value -- just like in HTML, where hyperlinks and page backgrounds are given colour through the entry of a hex colour value, certain videogames apply colour to characters and objects in the same fashion. 
Say you have a colour that you really like -- let's say this nifty lime-green colour. You come across it in Microsoft Paint one day and you run it through an online RGB-to-Hex converter.  You discover that this colour's hexadecimal value is #00CC00.  This value, no matter where you go in the world or what kind or age of computer you use, will always be this particular shade of green.  Why is this?  Because somewhere, hardwired into the motherboard, is a piece of circuitry that contains a compendium of all possible hexadecimal colour values. The total number of values supported by that display adaptor depends on the age, of course (an Apple IIc might not know what colour #A0F9CC is, whilst an iPhone would).

Anyway, what's the point to all of this?  Super Mario 64 got me thinking.  Once I discovered how the Nintendo 64 knew that Mario wears a red shirt and blue overalls, I got to thinking, "What other games colour stuff with hexadecimal values?"  I'm a tinkerer by nature. My favourite things to tinker with are videogames, inasmuch as devices like the GameShark and Action Replay make it so much simpler.  On the other hand, I prefer to mess with stuff myself.  You'll note that all but two of the Mario 64 recolours are of my own creation and cannot be found elsewhere on the Internet.  Even though someone else laid the groundwork by isolating the specific codes that govern the colours of Mario's parts, I made my own colours to put on those parts.  To that end, I thought it would be jolly nifty if there were other games that might have character recolouring codes.
Here is the list of games that may potentially let hackers... er... tinkerers alter the look of the characters...

-Super Mario 64
-Mario Golf 64
-Mario Party 1
-The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
-The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
-Super Smash Bros.
-Super Smash Bros Melee
-Super Smash Bros Brawl
-The Sims for sixth-generation game consoles
-The Sims Bustin' Out for GCN, etc.
-The Sims Bustin' Out for GBA
-The Urbz for GCN, etc.
-The Urbz for GBA and DS
-Super Mario Sunshine
-Super Mario Galaxy
-New Super Mario Bros.
-New Super Mario Bros. Wii
-The Sims 3

Now, these are just the games that I know of. I'm sure there are many other games that colour their characters with hexadecimal.
Also, you'll notice that a few of the games I listed there seem to use raster images instead of straight Super Mario 64-like hex colouring.
Around about the end of the Nintendo 64's lifetime (late fifth-generation), PNG images and alpha-channel became more widely-used. 
For instance, Super Smash Bros. Melee and its successor, Brawl, use PNGs to create the general look of a character's clothing and then hexadecimal to colour it.  Let's take Mario for example. In Melee, Mario had seven parts to his outfit: Hat, hat brim, shirt, overalls, overalls clasps/rivets, gloves, and shoes.  Also, even though these never changed, his skin and hair were probably also included in that list.  The PNG created all of the seams, stitching, and creases in Mario's clothes, and the hex values gave his clothes their colour.

I listed The Sims 3, but I know that it uses hex colouring values. How do I know this?  Those who have played the game know that Create-a-Style Mode has the option to recolour things with hex in the Colour Numbers tab.

Hex codes... they're not just for webpages anymore.

Posted by theniftyperson at 8:38 PM CST

Updated: Monday, 25 January 2010 9:36 PM CST

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A few months ago (admittedly, right on the release date), I went swiftly to GameStop and purchased The Sims 3 at full price.
Typically, I prefer to buy EA stuff secondhand, to ensure that none of my money goes to the executives' pocketbooks.  However, for one reason or another, I bought the game retail -- completely new, it was.
Anyway, I got it home and, after three hours of meandering about my computer, deleting stuff, defragmenting, and finally updating my (albeit, worthless) video chipset, I got the game to actually run.  Graphical artifacts associated with my unsupported chipset notwithstanding, the game is a complete waste of time. Things that were introduced to players at the outset of the series in 2000 were either forgotten or disregarded. Community lots were nigh-uncustomisable. Sims faces became more difficult to edit than they were in The Sims 2.  Everything that one builds or buys is so substandardly textured that one spends three-quarters of one's time in Create-a-Style Mode.  In-game music customisation took a step backward, inasmuch as all of the building modes and Create-a-Sim Mode's background music cannot be customised. Any individual songs that the player doesn't particularly care for cannot be disabled.  Plus, Steve Jablonsky's score isn't that good in the first place.  Half of it is re-arrangements of Mutato Muzika songs from the previous game, the other half is interchangeable with Desperate Housewives.

So, that's The Sims 3 in general, unexpanded.  Providing little, lacking much.
Now, presented with such a worthless game as The Sims 3, one must step back and ask oneself, "Is this worth expanding?"  Whilst it is very true that expansion packs are, by their very nature, optional pieces of software intended to supplement the base game with new objects, characters, and areas, I cannot see my way to expanding this game.

"But, Spiny," you say, "If there's something you wanted in the base game that wasn't there, maybe it's in the expansion pack!"
That's the key right there... maybe. You don't know until you've spent your money, gotten it home and installed it. Game developers (EA in particular) are not typically forthcoming as to exactly what is contained in their expansion pack.  They provide you with a title, some screenshots, and a paragraph or two to summarise, but I've never seen an itemised list of the exact contents of the expansion pack given before release.
Fortunately, in cases such as that, one has the Internet and thus gaming websites, whose contributors spend their money so you don't necessarily have to.  If one waits a while, one will eventually find a complete list of new features to show up on a website such as GameFAQs.com.

Getting back to the root of the problem: the main issue is, is this game worth expanding?  Allow me to explain by referencing The Sims 2.  There were certain expectations of what should be in The Sims 2 after The Sims had been thoroughly played through and all of the creation modes had been totally explored.  These expectations were the basis for what was released with The Sims 2.
Now, The Sims original did have expansion packs. Not everything found in these expansion packs could be found in The Sims 2 and supplementary software was released to combat this problem.  Eventually, The Sims 2, when fully expanded, did contain about 95% of what The Sims original had.
But, what made The Sims 2 worth expanding and The Sims 3 worthy of total ignorance?
Answer: nearly all expectations of what the unexpanded Sims 2 should have in it were met.  Whilst the unexpanded Sims 3 fell short of that mark and then some.  Not only did The Sims 3 fail to include things that were introduced in the unexpanded Sims 2, it also failed to include things that were introduced in the unexpanded Sims original.

The real reason, I guess, all comes back down to money.  Personally, I feel insulted that I paid fifty quid for something that, in terms of furnishing items, is inferior to The Sims original.  Additional insult comes in the form of the thought that Electronic Arts feels compelled to make me pay even more money across a longer expanse of time to get The Sims 3 up to the point when it becomes equal to its predecessor's predecessor.
It's like buying a Wii console and finding out that it's actually a case-mod of a Super NES.
To put it another way, it's like buying a 2010 model automobile and finding out that it only gets four miles per gallon of petrol.

So, it appears that the answer to the question posed in the title of this entry is, "No, The Sims 3 is not worth expanding."

Posted by theniftyperson at 6:31 PM CST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 January 2010 5:17 PM CST

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Well, actually, the title is a tad misleading. I don't know who the very first person was to claim Luigi was in Super Mario 64 or who created the first doctored screenshot to support that claim.
However, I do know how they did it, whoever it was, and that is the subject of this ancillary entry.

I recently added my own material to the "Luigi in Mario 64" rumour (which is, for all intents and purposes, long dead) in the form of this picture...

It's as simple as they come, this picture.  "Luigi" superimposed over a shot of Mario looking to his left.
I posted this on a Super Mario 64 Facebook fan page not too long ago, where it seems to be fairly popular. However, I get the idea that it's still fooling people (despite the word "simulation" written in the bottom right corner).  So, to dispel any remaining hints of deception, I shall recount how I made this screenshot.

Using a Super Mario 64 ROM, I took a much earlier shot of a GameShark costume recolour code in action. This shot here...

This is my own Luigi code, the exact colour values in which I will not disclose.  Now, the green colour of Mario's hat and shirt and the darker-than-average blue colour of his overalls are genuine. I set them using the costume recolouring codes.  The "L" on his hat is not genuine -- I put that on, myself, using Microsoft Paint.

So, I took that picture. Then, I blanked out the void-space around Mario, ending up with this...

I used that wonky magenta colour because, as I intended to insert "Luigi" into other pictures, I needed a transparent colour that cannot be found on "Luigi", himself -- sort of like on the evening news. There's a weatherman standing in front of what appears to be a map, when in reality, he is standing in front of a matte-screen coloured with something that isn't commonly found in clothing and doesn't reflect its colour onto skin.

I, then, took another screenshot with the Mario 64 ROM: this one being a normal gameplay shot of Mario standing in a palace corridor, facing the camera. I waited to take the picture until he turned his head in the direction I wanted to put "Luigi", that way it would appear as though he were looking at his brother.

Now, simply superimposing that "Luigi" over the screenshot of Mario would be a bit hasty. Why? One glaring reason... Luigi would have no shadow. The solution is simpler than one may think.  All I had to do was to copy Mario's shadow and feet in Microsoft Paint and paste them where I wanted Luigi to go.  Since Luigi is, in fact, a recoloured Mario, his feet fit perfectly over the copy. Also, the carpet texture in the featured room is complex enough for one not to notice a slight square-shaped repetition around the shadow.

So, Mario and Luigi in a Super Mario 64 palace corridor...

1. Recolour Mario
2. Photograph Mario and blank out the void space around him
3. Photograph Mario without the recolour
4. Copy Mario's shadow and place it elsewhere in the picture
5. Superimpose the recoloured Mario over the shadow
6. Achieve Internet fame!

Posted by theniftyperson at 12:01 AM CST

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The equation that explains why all life was created.

I'm sure you've done it at some time or other...
You have some extra time on your hands, so you look around your cubicle or school desk to see what you can do to stave off a visit from Mister Sand-Man.  "Hmm," you say to yourself, "A pen, a notepad... hey, I've got a zany idea!"
You start to draw a little figure on the edge of the paper. Maybe a stick figure or a ball, maybe a cube. Anyhow, you draw it once -- turn the page -- draw it again, only with slight differences -- turn the page -- draw it again, variating it slightly again.  Repeating this process ten or fifteen times, you cap your pen, return to the first page of the notepad, and flip through the pages.

In this manner, you have created a flipbook.

What is a flipbook?  Technically speaking, a flipbook is a crude method of stop-motion animation.  Stop-motion (or, "claymation" -- a misnomer, as not all stop-motion is clay-based) is the process of animating a figure by photographing it, moving it slightly, photographing it again, moving it slightly, and doing this until viewing the photographs in sequence at high speed creates the illusion that the figure is moving on its own.
Have you seen Wallace & Gromit? Chicken Run? That execrable Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that CBS insists on showing every Christmas?  All of that is stop-motion. Basically, a fancy feature-length flipbook.

I remember back in primary school, I was rather, shall we say, "obsessed" with flipbooks. It all started when I got a Toy Story flipbook from someplace or other. It was the scene where Woody tricks Buzz Lightyear into believing there is an alien behind him, then Woody laughs until he falls over.  On the reverse side was Rex roaring at Mr. Potato Head and blowing all of his parts off.
I figured, "Hey, I can make something like this!", so I gathered all of the notepads I could find (I even nicked one from school -- don't tell anyone) and started animating like mad.
Of course, the attention span of an eight-year-old is not that lengthy, and I started doing other things after a week or so.

Why do I bring this up?
I've gotten myself a Nintendo DSi for Christmas this year. To prepare for what I want to do with the console once I open the package on the 25th, I decided to go to the DSi website, just to look at what is available, DSiWare-wise.  One can't own a DSi and not take advantage of DSiWare... it's just not done.
Well, as it happens, a couple of Nintendo staffers came up with the idea to make a virtual flipbook into which one can draw with the stylus.
What really got me hooked into this FlipNote Studio, as it's called, was a demo animation made by Aardman Animation Studios. As any Wallace & Gromit fan can tell you, Aardman are crazy good at stop-motion animating.
Looking into the matter further, I found that the application had been the subject of the "Iwata Asks" segment (wherein Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, interviews people involved with development of consoles and certain games).  There were two interviews: one with the developers, one with a veteran animator who worked for Nintendo until 2007.  This animator, one Yoichi Kotabe, actually designed Mario's modern appearance, as well as those of everyone else in the Mario series.  At the end of that interview, he was asked to use FlipNote Studio (known as Ugomemo in Japan) to make short animations.

After I found all of this information, I knew I would be using FlipNote Studio. And I shall.

However, until December 25th, I've found my old notepads and I've started drawing stick figures again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and...

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:53 AM CST

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Ah, The Mind's Rubbish Bin. Ostensibly, the principal reason why this website exists.  TMRB is full of stuff I know that I can't possibly use. When I learn a piece of worthless information, I'll dump it into The Mind's Rubbish Bin so I can use that brain cell for a more important piece of knowledge.  It's my repository of pointless minutiae, really.

But, there are some pieces of information that are more memorable than others.
To that end, over the course of the next few months, I shall be compiling a list of a hundred or so of the best items from TMRB, both the page on the site and just in general.  When I'm done with it, I'll post it here and as a note on my Facebook account.

Posted by theniftyperson at 6:38 PM CST

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Maybe I'm the only one who has noticed this, but it appears to me that more and more otherwise innocent girl cartoon characters are being made into objects of male sexual fantasy.  I'm not just talking about manga, either -- the hentai (pornographic manga) fetish has been around for a long time. So long, in fact, that it's rather become mainstream. One expects to see bishoujo (Japanese slang for "pretty girl") prominently displayed on posters, book covers, and clothing.

No, I mean the more recent stuff.  Well, relatively recent, anyway.
Allow me to use Tinker Bell as an example.  We all know that Tinker Bell (or, simply, "Tink") is a pixie and friend of Peter Pan.  In the 1953 Walt Disney film, Tink attempts to free herself from a jewellery box through the keyhole, only to find that her rear-end will not permit her to exit from there.
Which brings me to my point. That scene was intended originally as your garden-variety butt joke, at which children invariably laugh.
However, somewhere along the line, that scene has been perverted by a voyeuristic spin-doctor, creating sexual tension where there was once German bathroom humour.
Then, sometime in the late '90s, an industrious person of ill-repute got hold of a "How to Draw Disney Characters" book and had his way with the character of Tinker Bell.  For some reason, equally as irksome, Walt Disney Pictures leapt at the chance to use this clear sexual marketing for their official merchandise.  Walk into a Walmart store and have a look at the children's clothing, at the school supplies, you will see what I mean.  A pair of girls' trousers with an image of Tinker Bell in a Marilyn Monroe-ish posture on the front, "TINK" emblazoned across the seat.

Another example is the Paramount character, Betty Boop. Predating the modern Tinker Bell by about twenty years, Betty Boop is, more or less, a representation of a 1920s flapper girl.  Ostensibly, this character is the first to make use of sex-appeal to draw audiences.  Usage of Betty Boop as a sex symbol are still used today.  Down the same row in Walmart where you found Tinker Bell on a pair of trousers, you will undoubtedly find Betty Boop on a shirt.

A far more new-age example, however, shows itself in the characters of the Super Mario princesses, Peach and Daisy.  Both characters began as the de jure rulers of fantasy kingdoms and dressed in royal attire.  As the years progressed, though, the Mario sport games required outfit changes.  In Mario Smash Football, it seems that the characters have gone off clothing altogether, favouring sleeveless midriffs and athletic shorts.

The other Nintendo princess, Zelda, although she does wear actual clothing, is designed as a bishoujo, appealing to the nigh-inbred hentai fetish.

Now, don't get me wrong.  All of this ranting may make me appear as a prude.  I have nothing against sex appeal by human actors. Sex is on television, in the cinema, in magazines, on signboards -- sexual marketing as an institution isn't going away anytime soon.  But, if we could stave off the usage of sex in cartoons for another 150 years, that would be great.  Because, guess what? Kids watch cartoons.  Even if the V-Chip rating is far too high for them.  So, sorry Seth MacFarlane, but if you put a character with sodding great knockers into a Family Guy episode, children will see it. Doesn't matter that it's not your target audience, but that's life, matey.

Posted by theniftyperson at 3:16 AM CST

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Yesterday, I took down the list of nifty people, the list of nifty videogames, and the Charles Martinet page for redesigning.  Since those three pages were the first to be put up on the new Spiny McSpleen's Nifty Website, they really don't match the style of the rest of the website.  Plus, I was never really satisfied with how all of the pictures in the Nifty List were different sizes.

So, for now, those three pages will be unavailable. Barring any unforeseen situations, I'm going to start the redesign this weekend.  When the Nifty List comes back online again, you may notice a few people and games are not on the list. That's because I've decided to make it more difficult for a person or videogame to get onto the list.  Simply being a composer won't get you onto the list -- you need to be a composer of highly unique music. Just because a videogame can steal hours of your life doesn't automatically make it nifty. It needs to have been innovative or done something notable that other games did not.

So, if you tried going to the Nifty List or the Charles Martinet page only to be confronted with an error message, that's why.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

Posted by theniftyperson at 2:54 PM CDT

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Yes. Today's date. Once every 100 years, there is a day when the numbers of the day, month, and year will align as today's date does.  And then, only insofar as the number of the year goes no higher than 12... extrapolating this, the final day of this century when all three numbers align will be on December 12th, 2012 (12/12/12). If you want to get technical about it, the final time for another century that all of the numbers in the date align like this will be on 12/12/2012 at 12:12PM, 12 seconds, and 12 milliseconds. Unless, of course, a 13th month is discovered before then. Unlikely.

Well, enough of that.
Interestingly enough, I had a show this morning.  Prior to last Friday, it never occurred to me that there would be an episode of Completely Different on 9/9/09, otherwise, I'd have done a bit more preparation.

However, although 9/9/09 is auspicious in its own way, any Chinaman will tell you that the real fortune lies in the number 8.  As a matter of fact, it was one year, one month, and one day ago that the day was 8/8/08.  You may recall that the 2008 Summer Olympics began that day in Beijing... in addition, as the number 8 is so important in Chinese culture, the Olympics began not only on the Eighth day of the Eighth month of the Eighth year of the Second millennium, it also began on the Eighth second of the Eighth minute of the Eighth hour.
There is an alarm going off in the "Worthless Trivia" section of my brain! The 2008 Summer Olympics began at 8:08:08AM on 8/8/08.

In a similar fashion, you will notice that this post was made at 9:09AM on 9/9/09.  As I wrote this in advance of the actual event, I was able to set such things up before I clicked "Publish". 

So, for those of you who like long, drawn-out descriptions of stuff...
This post was made on the Ninety-ninth millisecond of the Ninth second of the Ninth minute of the Ninth hour of the Ninth day of the Ninth month of the Ninth year of the Second millennium.

Maybe in the future, there will be another "Spiny McSpleen" who is around to witness 9:09:09:99AM of 9/9/9999.
That's a bit far into the future, though, eh?  Maybe just the Ninth day of the Ninth month of the Ninth year of the Ninth decade of the Ninth century of the Second millennium. 9/9/2999.

Too... many... nines!

Posted by theniftyperson at 9:09 AM CDT

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Remember last year, I was going on about a piece of software called the "GoldenEye Setup Editor"?  No? Well, I shall refresh your memory. It is a programme developed by two blokes who comprise the "Rare Witch Project" -- a consortium that specialises in hacking Rareware games for the Nintendo 64, with a particular emphasis on Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007.  The "GoldenEye Setup Editor" allows the user to muck about with the GoldenEye 007 ROM on one's PC, creating, essentially, new levels for the game.

Well, according to McAfee SiteAdvisor, the "GoldenEye Setup Editor" is now considered to be a "Red Download" -- that is, a downloaded application that exploits the host computer in some way.  Basically, it's a virus programme.  According to McAfee SiteAdvisor testers, it's naught more than spyware.
I guess it's a good thing I couldn't get it to work after all, eh?  Who knows what sort of havoc they could have been wreaking on my computer at this very moment?

Posted by theniftyperson at 2:12 PM CDT

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It's quite a thing to ponder, isn't it?
For a start, when I was in Socratean schooling, never in a month of Sundays would I have thought that I would be so very much into music that I would have enough to fill a CD!  I was always sketching something or other, building stuff with LEGOs, and other things -- that led me to think that I would become an animator or 3D modeller.  And, I mean, nowadays, I do that stuff... I model with Google SketchUp and I sometimes do the odd bit of stop-motion animation.  But, primarily, I'm a composer.  I spend more time at ZOROASTER-2 than anything else -- I hear songs in the television adverts and I think of whose style it most resembles: Mark Mothersbaugh or Steve Jablonsky? 
Talking of which, whenever someone talks to me about the cinema, my first thought is not the subject of the film or the actors in it, but rather who composed the music. "I saw Mousehunt yesterday!"  "Oh, Alan Silvestri wrote that score."

So. The next album.  Needless to say, Utopia has not been a huge success. I've only made three copies -- one is mine, the other two I gave away gratis.  But, it does serve as a jolly nice résumé for a potential composing job.
Anyway, I'm just starting to write new songs for the next album.  Hopefully, they'll turn out better than many of the tracks on Utopia.  I don't know how I managed it, but most of Utopia's tracks ended up being in the minor key.
Then, there are a few that just should never have been recorded. Like Lancashire Scherzo. I listened to it just now.  Every composer has a piece that he wishes he'd never written... Lancashire Scherzo is not that song, exactly. It'd be my second choice. My least-favourite song would be one that I knocked together at the last second for a project in radio broadcasting class at university -- it's called Spam and Beans for President, Please (or SBaPP for short).  The purpose of that piece was to be the background music for my rendition of an Ad Council PSA about uninformed voters.  Naturally, you will never be hearing SBaPP on any album.

For this next project, I'm going to score out all of the music in NoteWorthy Composer so I can make adjustments where necessary. Whereas, with a recorded improvisation, you've only one shot to do it right. If you don't like something, you only have three options: record something else and hope you like it better, leave it as it is and be forever dissatisfied, or just leave it out entirely.
The all-score method will, naturally, take longer than just improv, but it'll be more worth my time.  I may do a few improvisations, but it'll be mainly scores.  I mean, I'll have to record during my most inspired hours (usually early morning or late night).

Well, I've gone on long enough.

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:26 AM CDT

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Once again, I've improved on my website so much that I'm running out of space.
I recall this happening a few months ago, when I was lamenting what to do with The Sims page (which I still haven't uploaded). The solution was to take down the Completely Different webpage and turn it into its own website. I did that, which freed up one and a half megabytes. Not much, but enough for the Super Mario 64 page to have a lot of pictures in it.

Now, though, I'm running short of space in my Tripod account again.  I figure that, if absolutely necessary, I can have some spillover into my Completely Different account, or I could start a new account. But, such as it is... Spiny McSpleen's Nifty Website is finished.  A few minor edits to be made here and there, but I don't expect that I'll put up any new pages.  I may still follow through with The Sims page, but that'll be the end of it.

Once I have the money, I'll get my own domain. With a domain name comes storage space measured not in megabytes, but in gigabytes!
So, to that end, I would very much appreciate it if I could make the website popular through word-of-mouth. I'd rather not advertise, because, who looks at the adverts, anyway?  So, if you're reading this, kindly tell some other people about the website. Make sure to tell them the URL, also.

There's no point in paying monthly fees for a domain that no one knows about.

Posted by theniftyperson at 3:49 PM CDT

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I've finished another composition today. Actually, I started it today, as well.  It only lasts for a minute and 15 seconds, but I figured that was long enough. Some songs drone on for ten minutes or more and still don't get to the point (unless the point was to write a purposeless song and force people to sit through it).

The title of this song is The Crayon Symphony. I composed it in the style of Mutato Muzika, Mark Mothersbaugh's composing company -- I had The Sims 2 in mind when I was writing it.  To that end, it sounds very much like something from that game -- if they had ever done an expansion pack on kids' stuff, The Crayon Symphony would have fit right in.

You may be wondering about the title. Well, when I finished the score and played it back in NoteWorthy Composer, I was quite surprised to find how innocent it sounded... not a single anti-establishment or anarchical note in the whole piece!  In fact, listening to it, one finds one's mind conjuring images of children playing in the schoolyard. So, I thought of the most unassuming thing I could. Crayons. Waxy colour-sticks that serve no purpose other than to create childish drawings of oneself and one's family.  If anyone ever wrote a manifesto in crayon, you can be sure that it was laughed off and the writer was never taken seriously again.

Hence, The Crayon Symphony.

In terms of the actual composing, I used the same principle that I developed when I wrote Ouverture Utopia -- layering many simple phrases on top of each other.  Played alone, each phrase sounds simple and unremarkable. However, when played together, they make a jolly interesting piece of music.
Talking of Ouverture, I quite surprised myself when I listened to the entire song after I'd written it.  I figured my composing style must be worth something because all of those uninteresting tracks combined to make a rather bombastic and evocative composition!

Click Here to listen to a sample version of The Crayon Symphony.  The full version of the song will probably find its way into my next album.
It doesn't sound like much, the sample version. That's because I've removed some tracks -- the full version has a countermelody by the string ensemble and some pizzicato counterpoint to the harp.  I would post the whole thing, but I screw my chances of copyrighting the song unless I change it. I've finished writing the thing -- I don't care to go back and write two more parts just to satisfy the bureaucrats.

Well, that's that, then.

Posted by theniftyperson at 11:59 PM CDT

Updated: Sunday, 19 July 2009 3:49 PM CDT

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I haven't made an entry in quite a while!
The excuse is that there is just too much going on in Spinyville right now. Yes, I said "Spinyville".  On Monday last, I was strongarmed into devoting four hours of my day, Monday through Friday, squatting in front of the library bookshelves shelving picture books, like a caveman in front of a campfire.  The only difference between me and a caveman at this point is that I am less fascinated by what I'm looking at (a caveman would be new to the whole "fire" thing, making him suitably amused by it).  The positive side to this is that I'm making exactly minimum wage by performing this activity.

You'll not be getting rich in the library business.  I know, 'cos I'm not.

When I have a spare moment, I work on the webpage for Utopia.  It'll be going up on the Completely Different website -- there's more room in that account for the short audio clips of the album's tracks that I will be providing.  I don't know when I'll finish it and put it up... I haven't even returned the CDs I checked out from the library (not the same one at which I work) for last week's Completely Different, never mind reserving the next set of material. I should get on that first.

Posted by theniftyperson at 11:11 PM CDT

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I'll say right now -- I haven't been looking forward to making this review, but as I haven't made an entry in the better part of a month, I thought I'd get it out of the way.

First, my own experience with the game.
I got it on the release date and installed it almost immediately. It was here I discovered the game to crash after a very short time (the longest time between startup and crash was 35 seconds). I defragmented, I updated my video driver, and (at a great personal loss) I uninstalled The Sims 2 -- not without backing up everything, of course.
Though defragmenting and uninstalling The Sims 2 was probably beneficial for my computer as a whole, I think that it was the driver update that stopped the crashing. In fact, I suspect that all of my problems with The Sims 2 crashing could probably be attributed to out-of-date video software, also. So, two birds with one stone (I intend to re-install The Sims 2).  However, regardless of my efforts, I still have an unsupported video chipset, the performance of which is even more mediocre than I had anticipated. A view of texture resolution and Sim detail coming from my computer borders on the laughable.

Before we delve into the innermost workings of the game, let me address a few of the pre-release concerns that people may still have.
Above all else: SecuROM. Fortunately, thanks to the person who started the class-action lawsuit against EA for their inclusion of SecuROM in the game, Spore, SecuROM has been conveniently left out of The Sims 3, as EA opted to use a disc-based rights-management programme instead.
Next, in-game advertisements. I don't know if that was some sort of distasteful April Fool's Day joke, but that rumour spread like wildfire and has been proven to be completely untrue. Whether the adverts were never there in the first place or if EA decided to drop the idea for whatever reason, there simply are no real-world advertisers setting up shop in The Sims 3.

Now... the positives about The Sims 3.  Don't get me wrong -- there are several significant improvements in gameplay and customisation, relative to The Sims 2.
First and foremost, Create-a-Style Mode. By far, the best addition to the series. Create-a-Style Mode allows you to customise the appearance of 95% of the game's furnishing objects, building materials, and clothing designs.  In the past, if one wished to decorate one's Sim's house with a single type of wood, one would probably need to download many different object editing tools and edit all of the objects' textures to become a single type of wood.  With The Sims 3, it's just a matter of clicking on a few things.  Certainly, it can get rather micromanaging at times, but Sims Division have included a number of preset object styles with every object and material, in case you don't feel like editing something. Also, you have the option of saving anything you do edit as a preset so you don't have to keep editing the same objects over and over again.
Unfortunately, there are a few things that cannot be re-textured or re-coloured, such as books on a bookshelf, leaves on a plant, and several decorative items.

Also notable is Create-a-Sim Mode. Sims' body-mass can be edited more freely with the usage of The Urbz-esque sliders. The more to the right the slider is, the fatter the Sim becomes.  Sims' muscle-tone can also be edited in this way.
Several people noted that The Sims 3 did not have a pre-release Sim editor as with The Sims 2 and The Sims.  This is mostly because Create-a-Sim Mode, used in tandem with Create-a-Style Mode does everything that Body Shop and SimShow could do, but within the game itself.  All of the Create-a-Style textures and colours afforded to furnishings and building materials are also available to Sims' clothing and accessories.

I do rather fancy the contiguous neighbourhood -- being able to click on things away from my Sim's house, then having him go to that location and do things there.  I like being able to have my Sim collect things that he finds in the neighbourhood. There are gemstones and rocks for the science-types, rare seeds for the gardeners, bugs for the bug-collectors, and fish for the avid fishermen. Fish, of course, can only be found by fishing in bodies of water, but everything else is scattered throughout the neighbourhood.

Now that we've discussed the positives, we shall proceed to the negatives. And there are a fair few.
First, the most glaringly obvious of the whole lot -- community lots. Remember being able to zone a community lot in The Sims 2 and then being able to go there and set items for sale? Y'know, like groceries, clothing, and videogames?
Not possible anymore.  The Sims 3 makes use of buildings known among the community as "rabbit-holes" to let Sims purchase things.  The player is not allowed to see inside the building, much less build one.  There are no possibilities for building custom retail establishments on community lots. Certainly, you can build walls, floors, and a roof on a community lot, but the custom building can only be furnished with objects that are available to residences.  No more freezer, produce display, magazine rack, or clothes rail... no more cash registers.  If you played The Sims 2 for the building of community lots, The Sims 3 will prove very disappointing.

Despite the grand level of clothing customisation in Create-a-Sim Mode, the actual Sim face editor in The Sims 3 is very much more limited than that of its predecessor.  You can't make the same major changes to a Sims 3 face than you could in The Sims 2. Personally, I liked being able to shift all of a Sim's facial features up with the "Face Height" slider in The Sims 2 -- however, the same option in The Sims 3 will shift each feature up at a different rate -- eyes go up faster than the mouth, for example.
Also in Create-a-Sim Mode, there are far too few hairstyles available. In this game, there are only nine or so styles to choose from, where its predecessor began its life in 2004 with fifteen.

Another great disappointment was the lack of a piano. The pianoforte has been a staple of The Sims series -- along with the diving board, armoire, and miniature train set. None of those objects made the final cut in The Sims 3, either.  But, what especially stung me, as an admirer of classical music is that, not only is the piano absent from the game, but that is seems to have been, for all intents and purposes, replaced by an acoustic guitar.  The guitar is a commoner's instrument, made cliché by years of misuse by pop singers.  I know that a guitar is more portable than a pianoforte, and The Sims 3 being about portability of objects, given that the entire neighbourhood has now been opened to street musicians and painters, but why could the piano not have been an instrument for the home whilst the guitar was the instrument for the road? It's illogical. Unless they think they're trying to market to a demographic somewhere in the lower-middle.

Another annoying thing is how Sims enter cars. They make no endeavours at all to open the car door and get in. They just disappear from the sidewalk and re-appear in the car.
Also in the realms of annoyance, if one pays close attention to Sims' computer screens, one can see that the activities being carried out are not synched to the animations of the Sim using it. Windows will open and close on their own, typing text will animate onscreen when a Sim doesn't even have their hands on the keyboard.

Someone from Sims Division said in an interview months before the game was set to release that "you can play Sims 3 on your grandma's computer". The implication was that this meant they were striving to make the game compatible with as many operating systems as possible.  Now that the game has been released and I, with my, admittedly, pathetic laptop, have played it, I can safely say that, so long as your grandma has a thousand-quid, top-of-the-line desktop computer, yes -- you can play it on your grandma's computer.  The Sims 3 is more computationally-demanding than The Sims 2 was -- obviously, no attempt was made to find ways to make it compatible with any systems other than those with Windows XP or Vista.  Mac owners have reported so many bugs that the game becomes unplayable.  And me? It seems that I fall under the 77.4% of the gaming community who need to replace my video card if I ever hope to play the game up to a fraction of how it was intended.  Oh, wait... I can't do that because my computer is a laptop! My video chipset is hardwired into the motherboard -- I can't replace my video card without replacing my entire computer!

So, here's the overall point.  I have a great deal of difficulty in believing that Sims Division worked for five years and needed to have the release date pushed back four months in order to finish this game.  So many things have been either overlooked or omitted that it's almost obscene to think that this is the successor to The Sims 2.

Overall, I give the game 3/10. The creativity is there, but the means of carrying it out is sketchy at best.

Posted by theniftyperson at 11:03 PM CDT

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I guess I can't really say "FAQ" (standing for "frequently asked questions", of course), because I've only gotten one question. Still, I thought that I would post the solutions to some problems I had with the Super Mario 64 Mario recolouring codes when I was experimenting with them.

Q. Some of the colours aren't showing up right. What can I do to fix this?
A. When you put the hexadecimal code into the GameShark code, the game may not properly display the colour without a bit of persuasion. In cases such as these, I usually just change the shading to black. The shader codes are in the lower-case (rrggbb) in the code list.

Q. Can I have more than one recolouring code on at once?
A. No! GameSharks are extremely finicky and fragile. Depending on what game you play, two active codes that contradict each other can cause a small problem like funny-looking graphics or it can cause a big problem like wiping its own memory, crashing the game, and bricking the console. I use a ROM to test all of my codes before I even think about using them in the real game (with ROMs, only the software crashes, which can be restored easily -- there's no hardware to destroy).

Q. But, what happens in Mario 64 if I accidentally put 2 colour codes on?
A. I don't know what happens with the GameShark, but, on a ROM, two active colour codes will mix the colours together. If you want to do colour-mixing, though, consult a colour wheel -- don't experiment with the GameShark.

Q. Mario's completely white! I've put colours in the code, but they don't show up -- he's just totally white!
A. I've found that if you use white in the shading code, it overpowers the colours you put in and Mario just shows up white. I don't think it's possible to shade with light colours.  To reset the code so Mario isn't white anymore, take the shader codes out completely (they'll be the ones with FFFF and FF00 in the description). Don't bother putting them back in with different colours to match his clothes -- the game will do that for you.

Q. Mario looks kind of metallic? I think? I want him to wear white, but he's reflective pink instead. What have I done wrong?
A. If you're using a ROM and you've been copying and pasting codes, it sounds like you forgot to change the shading colour back from red. For white, I'd suggest using a grey colour, like 9999FF.

Q. How do I even put in the codes? You're making this more complicated than it should be, man!
A. Sorry -- I never covered that, did I?  Every hex colour value (let's say, 00CCFF) has three parts: red, green, and blue. In the example, 00 is the red, CC is the green, and FF is the blue. In the codes on the list, there are RRGGBB and rrggbb placeholders. You want to put the 00CC in the RRGG and the FF in the BB.  So, if you wanted to turn Mario's gloves this colour, the code would look like:
8107EC58 00CC
8107EC5A FF00

Q. Mario isn't shaded at all now! How do I get the shading back?
A. You probably set the shader to be the same colour as the object. In cases like that, the colour saturates, making Mario's clothes very bright.  Unless there's a specific colour you want for the shader, I'd just take the shading code out completely.

Q. How do these codes work, exactly?
A. I don't know exactly. I'd need to be a programmer to completely understand, but, in writing HTML code, I've had to deal with my fair share of hex colour codes.  I know that there are three descriptions in a hexadecimal address (000099, for instance -- the background colour of my website). So, really, you have to look at hex code not like "000099", but like "00 00 99".  That address tells the computer that there is no red, no green, and just under half of blue.  I don't know all of the ins and outs of Nintendo 64 programming, but I know that it used hexadecimal to carry out all of its functions. Colour is, no doubt, the same -- the graphics chip in the N64 and the chip simulator in N64 console emulation process the hex code and turn it into colour on the screen.  Like, if there's a man wearing a suit in an N64 game, the programmers gave the man's parts hex colours in case one of the suit textures (pictures of parts of the suit) doesn't show up.  In Super Mario 64, Mario doesn't have any major textures on him (just his eyes, sideburns, moustache, "M", and overalls clasps), so he can be easily recoloured with hexadecimal.  A game like GoldenEye 007, though, makes heavy usage of textures, so the characters can't be recoloured with hex.  Understand? Me, neither.

Remember, if you have problems with the codes, just post them in a response to this entry.

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:46 AM CDT

Updated: Tuesday, 2 June 2009 2:38 AM CDT

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Well, Spiny McSpleen's Nifty Website v.2.0 has been online for about three years now.  In fact, it's not really v.2.0 anymore... more like v.2.18.7, I've made so many edits to it.
Anyway, in the total of five years that theniftyperson.tripod.com has been online, I've basically just used it as a dumping ground for my knowledge of trivial information. Don't get me wrong, all's well and good with trivial information... but, I'm starting to run out of it.  To that end, I've been toying with the idea of giving the site a singular focus.  A point, if you like.

I'm going to experiment with various things to see how well they work before I set it in stone.  Right now, I'm considering turning the website into...

• A videogame review site
• A music site
• A photo site
• A "how to" site

One of those.  Of course, I might have some cross-over between all four.  Like, if I made it a game review site, I might have some MIDIs and screenshots from each game I review.

I don't know yet... I might even scrap the ideas altogether and stay my present course.
In any case, I think I'll start doing game reviews.  Some of those review sites are being paid off by developers, I think. One in particular.  I figure that no one could possibly think that I've been accepting payoffs for good reviews... just look around at the website -- does it look like the kind of quality that only money could buy?

I intend to start the reviews with The Sims 3 sometime next week (after I launch the Super Mario 64 page, that is). I'll put them here instead of the actual site. At least until I've amassed a few.

That is all for today.  Unless I think of something else, that is.

Posted by theniftyperson at 9:07 PM CDT

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Remember Super Mario 64? Remember, in the courtyard, there was that statue in the fountain with the plaque that seemed to read "L is Real 2041"?  Remember how everyone began to think that this was a message from the game's texture designers that meant that Luigi could be found somewhere within Mario 64?

Well, of course, that rumour has long since died away... or has it?

Yes, of course it has -- I'm just trying to sound mysterious.  Anyway, even though Luigi, himself, is not in Mario 64 in any capacity, my research for my Super Mario 64 webpage has led me to an interesting oddity created by game hackers.  I'd better let you see for yourself.

It's still Mario (as indicated by the "M" on his hat), but he's wearing Luigi's colours!  In case there's any doubt as to the authenticity of this picture, the GameShark code to make this recolour possible goes as follows...

8107EC38 007E
8107EC40 00FF

I took this picture directly from the game itself.
In fact, Luigi isn't the only character that can be recreated for Mario 64.  Looking into the matter even further, I found the master colour codes for Mario's entire outfit, including his skin.  I've been able to recolour Mario a number of different ways -- some of which you'll be able to find on the Mario 64 webpage when I put it up next week.

I could be greedy and keep the colour codes away from you... but, you'd just find them elsewhere on the Internet anyway. So, Click Here to find them.

Posted by theniftyperson at 1:37 PM CDT

Updated: Friday, 29 May 2009 2:05 PM CDT

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Remember that music album that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? Well, I've finally decided on a title for it.  I'll call it, Utopia, after the first track on the album, Ouverture Utopia.

But, therein lies the problem.  I scored Ouverture Utopia out in NoteWorthy Composer with the intention of printing it out and having an orchestra perform it.  I would think that the string ensemble at my old high school could perform it -- it's not all that difficult to play (no 32nd notes or complex syncopation), plus I'm fairly certain that the maestro would be more than willing to perform a piece that was written by a former student.

That being said, I would prefer it if I could release the album immediately. I re-recorded Terra-Metrics yesterday, so I'm finished with every track... except Ouverture Utopia.
As I see it, I have three options...

1. Have patience and send Ouverture off to my old maestro.
2. Record the song on my MIDI setup (ZOROASTER-2).
3. Put a different song in Ouverture's place and release it.

#3 isn't a very good option, because I'd have to change the title of the album. And that means making new cover art.  Well, I can hardly justify calling the album, Utopia, without putting Ouverture in, can I?

It is something of a dilemma.

Posted by theniftyperson at 6:04 PM CDT

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