byte-smasher’s domain

Best misheard lyrics EVAR:

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I had someone ask me today “But Bytey, what is the point of this strange website you’re constructing? You complain about dead forums, but it seems to me that to attract an audience, one needs a purpose… no?”

And to this I responded: There is no point. No porpoise.

Quite simply, I have no goal in creating this site. Well, there is complete world domination, but that was really an afterthought. My philosophy these days has been “build it and they will scratch their heads”. Is this some dadaist concoction, meant to astound and annoy? No, that it is neither.

Lets look at the facts:

1. I has a forum
2. I has som blogginz
3. I has som musics
4. I has som bad picturz
5. I has som writinz I’ve yet to post

And now you can see. Pointful? I think not.

I’m not trollin. I’m BYTE-Smasher.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="206" caption="this is your brain on noise"][/caption]

Just a quick update, I added some of my noise tracks to the Audio section. Enjoy! (And beware speaker/ear damage)

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="dead forum is dead... just like sad cat is sad"][/caption]

I’m sad to say, there is absolutely no action on my forums. None. And by none, I mean there is some, but it’s mostly me… and even I am guilty of being a horrible slacker, and lurking not enough.

This would be an issue of great concern in times past, but these days, I know that my self worth cannot be measured simply by my popularity on some website I throw together for the heck of it… if that were the case, sad cat would be a sad, sad cat indeed.

No, I’m better than that… I know that my lack of hawt website action is nothing more than an indication that I have very productive friends who have lives packed with more activities and tasks than normal people could handle. They’d have nobel prizes by now, but they’re just too damned busy to meet with the award committee.

And those that aren’t so busy have become zombie slaves to the evil entity known as “the facebooks”. That’s right, bloggerdom has a new enemy, and it’s face is booklike. It seems that “hooking up with old friends” is now more important than hooking up with old friends. Damn you, friends. Damn you to a room. A room filled with sad kittens and mudkips. I herd u leik mudkips.

So will my forums end up thriving like they did in the hayday of my extended highschool career? The answer, my avid readers, is no. And I shouldn’t take offense to it. I’m simply one person fighting against the interests of many. Simply one cog on a lone gear in the machine called “the blogoblagosphereacube”.

An acquaintance of mine posted this link on Facebook, prompting me to remember all of the cool little 2d physics “games” I’ve found online over the years. The most popular is linerider, which I find much too bland, so I’m not posting the link. The ones I am posting however, are absolute masterpieces.

Phun
Ever wish your childhood drawings could come to life? So did these guys… and they decided to go out and do something about it. Phun is a 2d “crayon physics” engine that’s significantly more fun than the title implies. Sure there are no crates to knock around or ragdolls to blow up…. but it’s just phun, k?

Fantastic Contraption
Fantastic Contraption decides to go one step farther than Phun and turn simple polygon physics into an actual game. The objective is simply to put an object into the “end area”. Seems pretty simple, right?

SodaPlay
SodaPlay was actually the first of these kind of toys I stumbled across, when I was hanging out on #truevision3d dabbling in gamedev in college. It’s actually a pretty ingenious concept really… it uses a physics engine based around lines and points to allow you to create various contraptions, from simple machines to seriously complex roller coasters. Ah, the time I wasted with this.

This is probably a good a time as any to spam some videos of my gamedev/physics tinkerings from college. Do yourself a favor and let them load before pressing play… youtube seems to be acting a bit wierd with the high quality embed settings.

I wrote this 2d pseudophysics engine myself:

These were made using the Truevision3d engine, which, sad to say, has essentially become vaporware:

I’ve finally leaked the URL… so I guess it’s official

… that and the Google indexed me much too soon… scary how fast it works these days

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="Deceptively delicious... I'm shocked and appalled"][/caption]

So I’m sitting here today, chowing down on some coffeecake I purchased… and thinking “this doesn’t taste as good as normal… I wonder how much coffee they actually put in here”

Oh how misguided a soul I can be sometimes. In all the years I have been enjoying such devilish delights, I never in that time guessed that the very title of my beloved coffeecake was a lie. That’s right people…. there is no coffee in coffeecake.

What? I can’t be serious, right? Well, I’m very serious. I’m dead serious. I checked the ingredient list for the deceptive pastry only to find out that there isn’t one bean’s worth of coffee in the entire cake. Not one. Not even a grain.

It seems that coffeecake, like everything in life these days, has a marketing team behind the scenes, pulling the strings. The public relations industry no doubt spent a fortune shaping public opinion to believe that this simple bland pastry had something special inside. Instead, we’re left with nothing but deceit… sweet, sweet, bitter deceit. Lucky for us, the bitterness of deceit is masked by remarkable sweetness. It’s becoming evermore apparent that the propaganda machine is well oiled with syrup and shortening.

So how many others have been duped into believing the lie? How many people chow down on their coffeecake in the morning before work only to find themselves oddly sluggish throughout the day? How many migraine sufferers have endured hours of needless agony because nature’s wonder-drug was unknowingly absent from their emergency pastry?

Well, like every disappointment in life, there’s no real way to quantify the damage done. Sufficed to say: Dorothy had it right… beware the baker behind the curtain. Don’t take everything at face value. What you don’t see can indeed harm you. A rose by any other name may just be a rose… but that rose might stab you in the back faster than you can gulp down your espresso. It might steal your girlfriend and run away to guam. It might actually be coffeecake in disguise. Coffeecake, without the coffee.