Right click and save

Aaaand I'm off to bed.

(It's crazy how busy you can end up being while not being officially busy with anything anymore!)

The first (very small) demo for my level is almost ready and will probably be ready to post tomorrow. If you would like to play it, you need to have the Knytt Stories game software, which you can download here:

http://nifflas.ni2.se/index.php?main=02Knytt_Stories&sub=01About

Play through the short tutorial that comes with it, and you'll know all you need to know to play my level. However, you should definitely also give the big level that comes with the software, "The Machine", a try, because it's really a very nice game - and coming from me, i.e. someone who doesn't usually like platformers, that's really saying something! And if you decide you like that well enough, you can also get another level pack at the link above which contains several other nice levels made by Nifflas - I especially liked "A Strange Dream".

As for third party levels, there's - literally - hundreds, and dozens out of those are nice enough to rec, but I don't want to overwhelm people here, so I'll just rec a few:

"Riku Island" is probably the single most beautiful environmental level. ('Environmental' being the genre of level that is all about bringing you the pretty, with as little stress as possible.) It's mostly very easy, with just one moderately tricky jump and then, later, a rather extensive maze which you'll probably need to draw a map for (or at least, I did). It's worth persevering, because the maze leads somewhere really nice.

Download link in this thread: http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?topic=1250.0

"Caverns" is huge, varied, and mostly very pretty, in an underground, cavernous kind of way. ;-) It's mostly very easy, with a few difficult bits - but you can have hours of fun with it even if you don't tackle the difficult bits at all. There's no point or particular ending to the level, or rather, the point is to run around and take in the sights.

Download link in this thread: http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?topic=940.0

"Lost in the Storm" is another large environmental, though not as large as "Caverns". This is probably a good starter level, as it's very, very easy, and also quite pretty to look at. It's almost literally a walk in the park. :-)

Download link in this thread: http://nifflas.ni2.se/forum/index.php?topic=331.0

What I've done since I finished uni:

- applied for a postgraduate course about the professional field of publishing and media
- worked some more on my Knytt Stories level
- played five browser-based adventures (today, when I was finally back online *g*)
- cleared away/sorted through the first three stacks of paper
- took a huge bag of discarded paper out to the trash
- sorted through the clutter on my desk and cleaned away the thick layer of dust that had accumulated on everything
- sorted through all my clothes, threw away everything that had more than one hole in it
- put up some new furniture
- washed three loads of laundry
- took back to the library all the books I had used for studying for my exams, except one that is actually so interesting I'm still reading it
- threw away all the way-past-its-use-by-date food I had forgotten in the fridge
- started phoning all the various government agencies I need to visit next week to get financial support while I'm looking for a job and so on
- made a doctor's appointment
- wrote half an essay about LoM 2.08
- made a backup of the LoM fic archive
- wrote half an article about computer games for fictionbox.de
- sorted through the first 600 e-mails
- took a quick look at lifein1973 and then decided to postpone fandom catchup a little longer
- began catching up on climate change news (short summary: SNAFU)
- slept
- danced

but here's a *great* article I really need to share:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/how-to-destroy-almost-half-planet-for.html

That's a great point about economic projections as guidance for - in particular - environmental policy; one that needs to be made more often and more forcefully, I think.

I think I may actually be able to upload stuff to my webspace from here. Let's try...

A desktop wallpaper I made from six images from my Knytt Stories level

And not a student anymore!

Well, officially still a student, I guess. But, I'm done. As of today. Many, many things went horribly, horribly wrong. I lost my nerve before the written exams. I got really sick for several weeks before the oral exams - lie-in-bed, cough-up-a-lung sick. I forgot to prepare for one half of one of my oral exams. (Yes, completely. As in: you enter the room and the prof says, 'We have two topics...', and you go, '... Wait, what?' My powers of repression are obviously prodigious. Seriously, anybody here ever *forgot* to prepare for an exam? I think that kind of puts me in a league of my own...)

But. Despite all that crap, it went better, way, way better than expected - all of it. Even the exam I forgot to prepare for went well (2-, for you Germans) - it probably helped that the topic I hadn't prepared for was one I'd done a heap of papers on over the years, so I still had some general idea of the main points. The thesis got a 1.0, which is basically as good as it gets.

The final average, for those who care (and know the German grading system), is a 1.4. I was a bit shocked to hear that, mainly because apparently I can't do even basic maths anymore - four of the five components of the final grade have been known to me since last week, but I must have added them up wrong, because I thought the range of possibility extended from 1.7 through 1.5. Good thing I'm not studying maths!

***

In other, more important news: I'm building a computer game.

Which is a bit of an exaggeration, really. I'm not building much myself, I'm just applying graphics (not made by myself) via an editor (also not made by myself) - but I hope I'm applying them in an aesthetically pleasing, and perhaps at least occasionally somewhat original way.

I downloaded this game, Knytt Stories, a few months ago. It's a platformer, a genre I'm not usually fond of, because I have the reflexes of a geriatric sloth, but I needed something to take my mind off uni for at least twenty minutes or so per day while I stayed at my parents' - something that didn't require an internet connection. So, eventually, I actually tried playing this game that had been sitting on my disk for a while, and liked it quite a bit. Unlike many platformers, it focused less on evading Death by Spikes or Death by Monsters or whatever, and more on exploring a fairly large and frequently quite pretty world. (Pretty in a 2D, stylised way.)

So, for a while Knytt Stories and its predecessor, Knytt, kept me entertained. But they're not that large, and sooner than I liked I had I finished them. Looking for something similar on one of my increasingly rare online forays I found user-made levels for Knytt Stories, and downloaded a few of those. But many of those are *really* short, and a lot are impossibly difficult and therefore do not appeal to sloth-like me, so that was a limited source of relaxation. So eventually, in between studying, I started playing around with the editor that Nifflas, the creator of the game, has generously included in the download package... and it turned out to be one of the greatest toys I've ever been given.

I'll post some images soon, when I'm back home with a normal internet connection (Friday, probably.)

I was just at the right place, just at the right time. I was walking through a park, and there was a patch of low, big-leafed plants that must have been watered recently; there were big droplets of water all over the leaves. And just when I was about to pass that patch, the sun hit the droplets at just the right angle to make them sparkle brightly enough to blind you. In fact, 'sparkle' is too mild a word - the whole patch *shone*.

It only lasted for about a minute...

~

Carps(*) are basically swimming mouths. When you cross the bridge they crowd close, expecting crumbs, hanging nearly perpendicular in the water with just their mouths reaching out, and you can look straight down into what feels like the bellies of the pond.

* I'm not entirely sure if they're really carps.

~

Rhododendrons are in full bloom, all over.

~

The exam yesterday... didn't go well, but it's done, and that's what counts. Thursday next week is the date set for my second attempt at last week's exam. I'm going to stay with my parents again, at least for some part of that time, because I'm doing better at not falling apart there. Also, in between studying I'm having fun rearranging their books.

Seen: a man transporting an elaborate, branching system of tubes - on a bike.

Received: Chapter Three of Templar, Arizona, in print. (Warning: link may be NSFW; current scene features naked, fat, incredibly happy man.)

Bought: This. Because that's *exactly* what I need right now.

Rediscovered: RGK is love.

Prepared: sort of.

Feeling: (only) reasonably nervous.

Okay, I realise this sounds a bit alarming after last night's/today's posts ;-) but the point of this post is to *avoid* poisoning myself, honest.

Here's the situation: this winter, we had a mouse problem in our flat. We tried everything, and everything we tried failed, so our landlord, who travels to India a lot on business, and swears by Indian rat poison in cases like this, got us two tabs of rat poison from India. I don't know how exactly my flatmates used it, because it happened while I was staying with my parents during my thesis writing period, but when I returned, there was a bucket full of saucers and teacups containing rat poison residue in the pantry. (Incidentally, the mouse was entirely unimpressed by the rat poison and lived happily ever after, as far as we can tell. It *finally* seems to have left the flat now, though - months after the rat poison maneuvre - because it's getting warm outside now. We haven't been finding droppings for a while.)

Nobody was very eager to clean the contaminated crockery for months, but today somebody apparently did, because the bucket is gone and the saucers and cups are drying on the rack.

Now, my question: do you think it's safe to use these, considering that there may still be trace amounts of rat poison on them? I'd hate to throw away perfectly usable crockery; on the other hand, I'd hate even more for us to accidentally poison ourselves...

Not so much of the exam, but of the art/activism combo.

After two days of being fairly motivated, some kind of paralysis of will set in and I didn't manage to do anything worthwhile (for uni) for five days. This, of course, is wonderful if you *already* don't have enough time to prepare adequately. But at least I discovered some truly beautiful flash games (about which, more later. After exams.)

So. I did the maths today, and found out something fairly surprising, and faintly comforting (though also faintly depressing - strange, how the same fact can be both comforting and depressing): If everything goes perfectly and I achieve the best result that's still possible after all this procrastination, in every single one of my exams, I will get the final average grade of 1.8. This is the depressing part, because once, I had a *realistic* chance of getting something quite a bit better - and, keep in mind that this 1.8 grade is only marginally possible anymore now; it's really very, very unlikely. However, here's the comforting part: if everything goes truly, truly crappy - including failing one of the exams completely - my final average grade will still be 3.3. And that's only if the thesis was crap as well (I still don't have the result). If the thesis was okay and the American studies exams go okay and only archaeology goes crap the result will be somewhere in the 2.3 - 2.6 range. 2.1 is still possible, too, though less likely.

These grades aren't great, but they aren't exactly disastrous, either. I'm a bit surprised that even failing one exam doesn't change the average all that much. It's still a bit crap that I'll end up with a 2-point-something grade, because my CV doesn't contain anything else that particularly recommends me to prospective employers, and I'd hoped that I could at least polish it up with a really nice final grade ;-) but then, for the kinds of jobs that I'd *like* to do, it's very likely that even a 1.3 wouldn't suffice to get me into them without additional skills and experience I don't have; and as for the jobs I can *realistically* get, I doubt the grade makes that much of a difference, as long as it's not an outright horrible one.

I'm sorting through seven years' worth of notes and excerpts to find stuff that may help me to prepare for exams. The first shock is how much stuff there actually is. I really did spend more than half of my archaeology studies doing vaguely or directly metal and metal technology related stuff, so I have heaps and heaps of notes about that. Far more than I thought. Should have checked earlier; I hadn't hoped to find much because I was under the impression that I'd been crap at taking notes etc. Turns out I'm just crap at remembering - both at remembering the stuff I made notes about, and at remembering I made notes in the first place. (Granted, not all of my notes are really all that useful.)

The second shock is how much the physical remains of my year at a British university make me want to cry. Had I been able to stay there, I really do think I would have become a real archaeologist. (Incidentally, browsing *all* the folders filled with my old uni stuff makes me sad - as usual, now that it's over, or nearly over, I'm realising how many opportunities I missed; how much more I could have gotten out of the last seven or eight years, if only... well, if only I were a different person, essentially. More single-minded, less distractable, more disciplined, etc.)

And the third shock, really, is how little I remember of it all. Seven (eight, really) years of my life, and much of that time spent on things that, yes, I *am* interested in, and here I'm surprised to find entire *presentations* I'd done that I'd completely forgotten about. Why is it that nothing that's related to archaeology really sticks, with me?

to tell you the story of my truly epic fuck-up with not one, but *two* profs involved in my exams, some day.

(Short summary of the current situation, without the, ahem, (pre)history of it all: I have a shitload of stuff to learn, in an impossibly short time, and I've managed to piss off everybody involved fairly thoroughly, so I can't really expect mercy from any quarter. Yay.)

Things continue to go extraordinarily crappy on the exams front. Hooray.

about a prof whose e-mails sound pretty friendly, but who consistently starts every e-mail to you like this:

"Dear Mr. [RealName]"

?

(And nope, my name is not gender-neutral, and I do sign my mails with my full name, and send my uni-related mails under my full name, so it should be visible in the 'from' field of his mail program when he receives mail from me.)

Will he ever get a surprise when I turn up at his office tomorrow... :-D

Fare you well, my friends - until May or so. Feel free to e-mail me, though; I will generally make an effort to at least check my e-mail, even if I drop out of most internet interactions. (Especially, feel free to e-mail me about fannish concerns; I tend to miss fandom a lot in my 'away' phases.)

One last bit of frivolity before I leave: I have to admit I'm considering ordering a copy of this just for the concept, although I'm not actually overly fond of either of the two components on their own... Sadly, I already filled my monthly "buying something just for the bizarre premise" quota yesterday by buying Towing Jehovah, which is about, well, towing the gigantic corpse of God. Last month's quota was filled in abundance by Afterdead, of course.

Speaking of which: Donna Barr has begun making The Desert Peach available online. The Desert Peach is a classic of the alternative comics 'explosion' of the 80s and 90s, and a marvel on many different levels - a complex and humane work about the moral muddle, the inner and outer conflicts and compromises that characterise individuals' lives in very nearly every social context and life situation, examined against the background of a compound of the worst contexts and situations people have managed to create (nazi Germany, the military, and war). If this sounds depressing: it isn't. Some of it is quite funny, in fact - but it's also deep and often unsettling. There are no easy answers; just questions, and then more questions. The characters breathe, and so do the backgrounds; everything feels alive and real. I've been particularly impressed with the depiction of Germany after the war, in the last few issues of the series before it morphed into the mindbogglingly psychedelic Afterdead. (I have the good fortune of owning most of the original series in print.) Those last issues remind me of the "Trümmerliteratur" (Wikipedia: "rubble literature") some of us probably remember from school, only... not. It is, of course, less focused on the whole "woe is us" aspect, which accounts for some of the difference. It feels less apocalyptic. The main difference, though, is perhaps the way in which the issue of guilt is handled, which... deserves an essay, sometime, I think. After my exams, maybe.

**

In other news: I had a wonderful night writing fic, the day before yesterday. Best writing session in ages - nearly a whole page in less than five hours, really moving the plot forward, all the way into madness. I'm still floating on that high. I should be really worried about my exams right now, because, to put it plainly, I'm in deep, deep shit due to some circumstances partly out of my control, but somehow I can't make myself care. Writing feels so much more important. *g*

I have several long, unfinished essays sitting on my harddrive about why I 'choose' to believe the doomsayers (see footnote) on the issue of climate change. Turns out I needn't have bothered to put down so many words, because this guy here does a much better (and probably more entertaining) job of it - and does so in a youtube vid!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg

This is pretty much exactly how my own decision making process went on this issue. Minus the hat. *g* It's a great vid to forward to skeptical and/or confused friends & relations - all those people who are reluctant to trust instances like 'the media', 'science/scientists', 'environmentalists', and 'politicians' - because it neatly cuts through all the confusion and political resentment to the central logical argument that - wonder of wonders! - doesn't actually require any sort of trust or belief, or even allegiance to a particular political cause.

***

Footnote: "doomsayers" in this context means "people who say we are likely to face a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, ranging from the collapse of civilisation to the possibility of extinction of oxygen-dependent life on Earth, in the fairly near future, unless we take the truly radical action of changing our entire culture, fast".

Historically speaking, doomsayers have nearly always been wrong, and it is therefore a culturally well-established, and for the most part a very *reasonable* response to dismiss with a laugh anyone who makes such extreme statements. However, it is also, usually, a good idea to look at who it is that makes the statement before you laugh, and to try to determine, as the guy from the video puts it, "what's the worst that could happen" if they're right...

I like this video so much because it makes it crystal clear that in this particular case, taking the doomsayers seriously is a very *sensible* choice. I have the same reflexes as everybody else (I guess) to dismiss extreme claims of looming catastrophe as hysterical, and have occasional flashes of strong doubt, so it's good to see someone else laying out the case for rational alarm. *g*

(I'm increasingly using lj as if it were twitter... *g*)

Your mail provider has decided to block all mails from my mail provider, so I can't e-mail you anymore (only getting mailer daemon messages back about my provider being blocked); hence, LJ as ersatz mail service:

Re: Name

How about DIY Canon Productions?

and therefore unable to post about world saving stuff, you can find a far better selection of news and analysis than I could ever hope to offer here. The guy's been getting a lot of media attention recently; deservedly so. Basically, if you want to check only one site to stay up to date on the Biggest Issue of All, this is the site to check. I may have plugged it before, I don't remember. Anyway, can't recommend it too often, really.

I've been staying with my parents for the last week (being ill while having to prepare for exams is a good excuse for that sort of thing). Whenever I'm at my parents' my fanvid consumption increases, because absent the internet, this is the easiest 'five minute fandom boost' to get. This reminds me that maybe I should post a reminder to people here about my vidrecs journal, because that's actually active now. Mostly. I may still shut up again for a few weeks, when the exams phase gets hot, but I have several entries already in the pipeline so I should be fine for the next two or three weeks at least.

The other thing increased fanvid consumption reminds me of is that Farscape is and remains the One True Show. Sorry Life on Mars. I may be writing more about you these days, but Farscape will always be closer to my heart - and not just because it didn't so callously break it. (Everyone who knows Farscape knows that Farscape breaks hearts lovingly, not callously.)

Dammit, I need new people to 'scape. Preferably live and in person. Any volunteers? K., maybe? C'mon, you like science fiction, you like sf tv, what could possibly go wrong? *veg*

***

Speaking of infecting people with shows - I may have found a new victim for Life on Mars. Time will tell.

***

A note to the British: you may want to rethink how you spell and/or pronounce place names. ;-) When I learned, recently, that "Happisburgh" is pronounced "Hazeborough"... well, it did set me to wondering, for about five seconds, if this was all just a bizarre prank you play on us foreigners. I mean... Salisbury... Edinburgh... Worcester... surely you can't be serious? :-D