I've been on YouTube for 5 years plus, and over the course of those years I've sometimes wondered what it would feel like to open my emails one Monday morning and find my inbox swamped with YT notifications after one of my videos somehow managed to go viral over the weekend.
Well, one can dream. It's never happened.
Until yesterday, it sort of did - except not on YouTube.
My Mondays usually start somewhere around 9am, but I was brought to half an hour early yesterday, as Ben popped in and said something (sorta casual, as you do) about all those votes and comments that one of my recently-published Portal 2 custom maps had been getting. Well, the last time I checked, my most popular map had achieved something like a dozen views, seven or so people playing it, few enough votes (in either direction) that you could count them on one hand, and around two comments. It had been about a week since I last logged into Steam - a week, on my Steam account, is usually just about long enough for absolutely nothing to happen - but my still-not-quite-awake brain thought it heard Ben say something about 'nearly 2000 votes'. I would probably have fallen out of bed, except that I'm in the rather sensible habit of sleeping towards the middle of the mattress, rather than hanging off one side.
8:30 may count as 'a bit too early' on ordinary days, but Ben wasn't joking, so it seemed that this wasn't ordinary days. I promptly decided that if I really had got literally thousands of people playing one of my maps, then this was clearly worth getting out of bed half an hour early for. Sure enough, I fired up Steam and found some 57 messages, nearly all of them comments on Cliffs of Insanity, and stats boxes showing it had been one of the 3 or so most popular P2 custom maps for the last several days. Someone even had a screencapture video on YouTube showing themself solving the map - which I have, needless to say, added to my favourites list. And somebody else left a comment in Russian.
The numbers kept going up, some of them by the hundreds, over the rest of the day, and were still rising this morning.
And just as I was all fired up in test-chamber-building mode, somebody somewhere in the deeper recesses of Valve went and broke something. As of first thing this morning, I can load Steam perfectly well, thank you very much, but Portal 2 won't start for love nor money; I get an error every single time saying that "the Steam servers are too busy to handle your request for Portal 2" - which doesn't make a great deal of sense seeing that I had the game already working 24 hours ago. Quite annoying timing.
I digress. The main point of all this was to say what had happened, and to comment that it all feels really weird after all those years of obscurity. Really, really weird.
But not unpleasant.
- The Colclough
Showing posts with label Weirdness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weirdness. Show all posts
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Cheese or Democracy
This is probably one of the oddest questions I've ever been asked, so I should have fun writing up my answer. Question 2: Cheese or democracy - which would you go without for five years?
Of course, the good responsible citizen's answer would have to be "go without cheese". To say that you value your toasted cheddar sandwiches above your political freedom would be to disregard the sacrifices of those who... um... sacrificed stuff, to earn the vote for the rest of us, and so on and so forth, blah blah blah.
But that sort of logic (while sound and patriotic) doesn't make for a very entertaining blog post, does it?
There's a case to be made for saying I can actually choose to keep the cheese, and it goes something like this: in between elections, we seem to have relatively little sway over our government. We can jump up and down and complain that something's a terrible idea, and they just push it through anyway. T. Blair was pretty good at that, as you may remember. So with the current fixed-term parliament, you could argue that we're more or less going without democracy for five years anyway.
Besides, cheese is integral to lots of other things. You can't have a Staffordshire cheese and bacon oatcake without cheese, because otherwise it'd just be a Staffordshire bacon oatcake - which is still good, but not as good as the version with cheddar in it, in much the same way that a sponge cake is good but a sponge cake with jam in is better. You can't have Wallace & Gromit without cheese, because Wallace's love of cheese (and his consequent propensity to make rash decisions for cheese-based motives every so often) is one of his most important character traits - after all, their first adventure was all about going to the moon to get some cheese because the moon's made of cheese, wasn't it? And that leads me onto another important point: the moon is (at least allegedly) made of cheese, and therefore to go without cheese for five years would mean spending those five years without moonlight, and without any tides, which in turn would wreak havoc on the marine ecosystem (how can a turtle come to lay its eggs on the spring tide, if there aren't any spring tides?), and thereby possibly set up a domino effect leading to the collapse of all life on earth.
Therefore, on balance, I think I might actually say "go without democracy". Even if I only do it for the sake of the turtles.
I'm deeply curious as to how Tim will vote on this one!
Stats:
- The Colclough
Of course, the good responsible citizen's answer would have to be "go without cheese". To say that you value your toasted cheddar sandwiches above your political freedom would be to disregard the sacrifices of those who... um... sacrificed stuff, to earn the vote for the rest of us, and so on and so forth, blah blah blah.
But that sort of logic (while sound and patriotic) doesn't make for a very entertaining blog post, does it?
There's a case to be made for saying I can actually choose to keep the cheese, and it goes something like this: in between elections, we seem to have relatively little sway over our government. We can jump up and down and complain that something's a terrible idea, and they just push it through anyway. T. Blair was pretty good at that, as you may remember. So with the current fixed-term parliament, you could argue that we're more or less going without democracy for five years anyway.
Besides, cheese is integral to lots of other things. You can't have a Staffordshire cheese and bacon oatcake without cheese, because otherwise it'd just be a Staffordshire bacon oatcake - which is still good, but not as good as the version with cheddar in it, in much the same way that a sponge cake is good but a sponge cake with jam in is better. You can't have Wallace & Gromit without cheese, because Wallace's love of cheese (and his consequent propensity to make rash decisions for cheese-based motives every so often) is one of his most important character traits - after all, their first adventure was all about going to the moon to get some cheese because the moon's made of cheese, wasn't it? And that leads me onto another important point: the moon is (at least allegedly) made of cheese, and therefore to go without cheese for five years would mean spending those five years without moonlight, and without any tides, which in turn would wreak havoc on the marine ecosystem (how can a turtle come to lay its eggs on the spring tide, if there aren't any spring tides?), and thereby possibly set up a domino effect leading to the collapse of all life on earth.
Therefore, on balance, I think I might actually say "go without democracy". Even if I only do it for the sake of the turtles.
I'm deeply curious as to how Tim will vote on this one!
Stats:
- Last 10 for 17 status: 3 down, 7 to go.
- Latest book read: still The Kink and I
- Latest film/TV watched: still Logan's Run
- Latest music listened to: still that thing by Yanni, I think
- Latest edible item eaten: Chilli con carne
- Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1)
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable Episode 1474
- The Colclough
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Sparkly or Undead?
A bit like Question 15: "Sheep or cows?", but odder and more fictional... and maybe trickier - Question 16: "Zombies or unicorns?"
Wow. What a choice to have to make. Sparkly white horses with magical horns on their foreheads versus the creeping, oozing, rotting, brainsss-coveting undead.
Sorry to keep doing this, but once again I must resort to summarising various points for and against in the tried and trusted bulleted-list format:
Them statistics:
- The Colclough
Wow. What a choice to have to make. Sparkly white horses with magical horns on their foreheads versus the creeping, oozing, rotting, brainsss-coveting undead.
Sorry to keep doing this, but once again I must resort to summarising various points for and against in the tried and trusted bulleted-list format:
- It would probably be more manly to say Zombies. Just because they don't sparkle. If I'd asked Hannah the same question, she wouldn't have this problem. But then again, how much do I care?
- Unicorns probably won't eat you. Definitely a point to Team Sparkly.
- You might be able to use a unicorn as a lawnmower. Zombies probably not.
- It's usually a given that zombies want your guts, but is the unicorn also out to get you? If so, then I'd vote Zombie, because it's much easier to outrun a shuffling corpse than a galloping equid.
- But the flipside to that is that if I had to pick one or other as a mode of transport, then I'd have to vote Unicorn for exactly the same reason.
- If I was going to have a conversation with one or other, I'd talk to the unicorn. Because they're supposed to be able to speak (I'm told), or at least understand speech, while the undead would rather kill you than listen to you.
- At the other extreme, if I had to eat one or other, I'd eat the unicorn. It'd taste millions better - assuming some sort of unicorn protection magic didn't kill you as soon as you stuck your fork in - and zombies almost certainly carry multi-resistant salmonella or something.
- Both critters are equally damaging to metaphysics.
- If I had a girlfriend to worry about, then I suspect she'd want me to say Unicorn - "My boyfriend's got a unicorn!" sounds a bit less repulsive than "My boyfriend's got a pet zombie!" But I don't, so that doesn't count.
Them statistics:
- Twenty Questions status: 18 down, 2 to go (so close now...)
- Days until Root Hill: 2
- Latest book read: Jennings Follows a Clue
- Latest film/TV watched: Red Dwarf 1.6
- Latest music listened to: How to Train Your Dragon OST by John Powell
- Latest edible item eaten: croissants and cowjuice
- Predominant colour of clothes: back to blue
- Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Create Post)
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1339
- The Colclough
Thursday, 4 August 2011
I Think We Just Broke Metaphysics
What follows could be one of the most confusing blog posts I've ever written, as I attempt (whether I'll succeed is another matter) to answer what is probably the strangest of Hannah's twenty queries, Question 2: "If you were an animal, how on earth did you become an animal?" I've decided I should tackle this one head-on, rather than pushing it further and further down the list while answering all the easier ones. Let's get it over and done with...
The really logical answer (at least that's what my brain tells me it is) would be "if I was an animal, then I probably would have come into being the way most animals do: by having two other animals of my species decide it was breeding time".
There's another technicality I should point out: you could argue that in terms of biological classification, I'm already an animal, in the sense that humans as a species are much more animal than they are plant or fungus or bacterium, i.e. in the sense that we've got bones and muscles and nerves and bloods and vital organs, we lack roots and leaves, and so on.
However, I suspect the question was meant to imply a transition from being human to being an animal. So, if I had achieved this feat, how would I have done it?
Having never done it, I don't have a definitive answer. But there are all sorts of exciting - read: worrying - hypotheses, which I shall list in order of decreasing probability (and, for the most part, of decreasing appeal):
Now, if you'd asked what animal I would have been, that'd have made for an entirely different blog post. But you didn't.
Me statistics:
- The Colclough
The really logical answer (at least that's what my brain tells me it is) would be "if I was an animal, then I probably would have come into being the way most animals do: by having two other animals of my species decide it was breeding time".
There's another technicality I should point out: you could argue that in terms of biological classification, I'm already an animal, in the sense that humans as a species are much more animal than they are plant or fungus or bacterium, i.e. in the sense that we've got bones and muscles and nerves and bloods and vital organs, we lack roots and leaves, and so on.
However, I suspect the question was meant to imply a transition from being human to being an animal. So, if I had achieved this feat, how would I have done it?
Having never done it, I don't have a definitive answer. But there are all sorts of exciting - read: worrying - hypotheses, which I shall list in order of decreasing probability (and, for the most part, of decreasing appeal):
- Maybe a mad scientist kidnapped me and transferred my consciousness into a different body?
- Maybe I was surreptitiously fed a gene graft formula by an unscrupulous aide?
- Maybe I changed species during a freak teleportation accident?
- Maybe I got bitten by a radioactive mutant thing and started expressing its genes instead of mine?
- Maybe my life is part of a really weird webcomic, and I changed by cartoon logic?
- Maybe I got abracadabra-ed by a senile old fairy godmother who was aiming for somebody else?
- Maybe I set my heart on changing species, wished really really hard, and got what I wanted?
- Maybe I died and it turned out the Hindus were right?
Now, if you'd asked what animal I would have been, that'd have made for an entirely different blog post. But you didn't.
Me statistics:
- Species, at last check: Homo sapiens
- Twenty Questions status: 8 down, 12 to go
- Days until Root Hill: 16
- Latest book read: ...keep assuming, etc...
- Latest film/TV watched: The Bourne Ultimatum
- Latest music listened to: still How to Train Your Dragon OST (I think)
- Latest edible item eaten: beef burger
- Predominant colour of clothes: back to blue
- Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1); Skype
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1328 and 1329; Fort Paradox #69 (going away for the weekend, so I posted them early)
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Mixed Stuff
Yay for anthology blogs! At least this time I've got a keyword that conveniently helps describe all of my points...
Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again. This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online. I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.
Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.
As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.
Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back? I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation. It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green. But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:
Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it. I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.
The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure. It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness. And that Sontaran was hilarious. But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode. Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time. Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.
Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church. Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing. Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.
Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary. Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all. I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage. I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.
So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about. And finally: anatomy. Yes, you read that right. The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures. I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense. As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology. You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well. The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches. You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see? Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties. Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant. My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads? Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.
Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.
And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.
Have a biscuit.
- The Colclough
Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again. This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online. I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.
Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.
As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.
Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back? I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation. It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green. But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:
Untitled Kingfisher Painting (still a work in progress... but this time with more progress!)
Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it. I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.
The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure. It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness. And that Sontaran was hilarious. But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode. Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time. Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.
Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church. Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing. Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.
Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary. Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all. I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage. I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.
So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about. And finally: anatomy. Yes, you read that right. The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures. I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense. As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology. You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well. The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches. You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see? Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties. Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant. My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads? Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.
Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.
And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.
Have a biscuit.
- The Colclough
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Free Sample Time!
You know those little nanoscopic jars or packets of food or cosmetic products you get handed gratis sometimes, in an effort by the manufacturers to get you hooked and make you spend loads of money buying their stuff?
This is a little bit like that, except that I don't have any financial incentive whatsoever, and this particular free sample might addle your brains a bit: I've decided to share with you the newly-penned 12th chapter of a rather odd short story which I've been writing on and off since mid-November (provisionally entitled A Salesman Beneath), just because I feel like it.
I have no idea how much sense this might make to you reading it in isolation, and I'm equally unsure how much sense it might make even in the context of the previous 11 chapters, but here goes anyway...
*****
A few minutes later, Pone found himself being handed one end of a long length of flexible piping, whose other end was attached to the top of the stove. Meebrick and Nodroz each had one too.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“To breathe,” said Nodroz, sounding terribly matter-of-fact.
“What, the stove’s exhaust fumes? Aren’t they usually poisonous?”
“It’s a connective stove,” Nodroz said, with a withering stare as if it should have been plain and obvious.
“Oh, I see: so they’re connective exhaust fumes!” Pone drawled. “But of course. That makes me feel so much better about gassing myself to death, if I can do it connectively.”
“Was that sarcasm?” asked Meebrick.
“Take an educated guess,” snapped Pone.
Nodroz gave them both an even witheringer glare, and stuck the end of his own pipe in his mouth. There followed several minutes of pointedly heavy breathing, as the old man sucked the stove fumes deep inside his system, clearly eager to demonstrate that it would have no ill effects. After the first few breaths, Meebrick chowed down on his pipe, and started tentatively puffing. Neither of them shrivelled up or went purple or turned into a guinea pig, so eventually Pone decided to risk it.
The result was terribly disappointing: the fumes smelled and tasted of absolutely nothing whatsoever. In fact, the gases coming off the stove were cool and fresh and impossibly clear, like what you would expect to be breathing on the top of a huge mountain in the middle of a vast unspoilt wilderness. Pone gave himself another headache on top of the one he already had, trying to work out how it was possible for exhaust fumes to smell so un-exhaust-like. But it didn’t last long, due to the healthful influence of the fumes.
“Are you yet satisfied with your breathing?” asked Nodroz.
Pone nodded very reluctantly, and clung to the railing for dear life as his host turned back to face the wall of bold red jelly overlapping the prow of the boat.
“Come then,” Nodroz mumbled through a mouthful of breathing tube, “Let us go henceforth into the core of Wobble!” He raised his arms in a dramatic gesture, and as if in response the inert front-left engine glimmered back into life. Then he intoned a loud and forceful “HUMNNN!” and flung his arms forwards to signal the intended direction of movement – and the Contradictorium slowly but surely started to push its way deeper into the gelatinous micro-planet.
“By the way,” Pone queried, “why does this asteroid or planet or whatever it is have such a dumb-sounding name?”
“It’s made of jelly, and jelly wobbles,” remarked Nodroz with his usual, irksome serenity, “so they called it ‘Wobble’.”
Pone groaned inwardly beneath the burdensome weight of this new knowledge.
“Bish ishho exhitig!” Meebrick giggled through his breathing tube. And as if that wasn’t undignified enough, he clapped his hands like a little child.
A moment later, Pone found the jelly approaching just inches from his nose.
“What is it with me and jelly lately?” Pone wondered. His hair was still full of blobs of goo from his recent encounter with the invertebrate shoal. But the blobs were soon lost to sight as they amalgamated into the greater mass of the micro-planet Wobble.
The stuff was more yielding than he might have expected, and once it had got itself on the move the Contradictorium seemed to have little trouble forging a path through it. The jelly flowed back into place behind the boat, leaving only a negligible wake of tiny bubbles to show where they had been. Pone became profoundly grateful for the stove hose.
The journey into Wobble seemed to go on for quite a long time, and there weren’t any landmarks on the inside. Pone started to despair of ever escaping. He attempted to distract his suffering brain with thoughts of financial outlays, profit margins, sales commissions and tax bands, and when that failed he turned his thoughts to his paternal aunt and her frankly terrifying collection of tea-cosies. She had thousands upon thousands of them, and was always after more. The surest way of making her happy was to give her another one, and the next surest was to give her a teapot to put inside one so she could display it properly.
Many centuries passed, and what with the lack of landmarks and the impossibly clear air he was breathing, Pone started to feel that he was drifting outside of the space-time continuum altogether. He started to doubt the existence of the outside world, and to wonder if maybe this surreal jelly was all there was, and all there ever had been.
Those centuries were actually two and three-quarter hours.
And then he was rudely pulled back to reality by the sound of Meebrick squealing a few feet away, muffled a bit (but nowhere near enough, Pone thought) by the surrounding semi-solid dessert.
“What’s wrong with the blighter now?” Pone asked himself.
He turned to look, and saw that Meebrick was pointing and staring straight ahead.
Ahead of the ship, deep inside the jelly, he could faintly see the outlines of some sort of transparent structure. There were rooms, and doorways, and what looked like stairs – and he even thought he could glimpse a pot plant or two.
Minutes later, the boat glooped its way out of the wall of a large room inside the jelly, and drifted to a stop in the middle of the floor.
The space was filled with all sorts of scientific equipment – microscopes, telescopes, orreries, burners, test tubes and flasks, rulers and tape measures and callipers, vices and tweezers, and books upon books upon books. It was hard to tell whether everything in the room really was made of copper and bronze, or if it just looked that way because of the red jelly which comprised the walls, floor and ceiling surrounding them. And Pone had been right – in another room at the top of a short, broad staircase, he could see a real, live pot plant. He wondered (with good reason) whether it had a funny name and whether it was going to be rude to him.
And in the middle of it all, not looking remotely pleased about having visitors, stood a very small girl in a long pink dressing gown, with a glowing magenta ponytail and a ferocious scowl. And a monocle, which didn’t really go with the rest of her look.
Meebrick gave an enthusiastic greeting, but sadly forgot to remove the breathing pipe from his mouth first, so it didn’t come out very well. He was glared at like something the cat dragged in. But being Meebrick the misnomer, he wasn’t much bothered by this and just kept on grinning and waving.
“GRANDMOTHER!” bellowed the little girl.
“I am so sorry to intrude,” began Nodroz the Third, “but might I take this opportunity to introduce…”
“GRANDMOTHER! I need you in here RIGHT NOW!”
There was one of those difficult silences.
And then a couple of minutes later, a tiny, hunched old lady oozed out of the ceiling and dropped onto the gelatinous floor just in front of the Contradictorium.
“How many times must I tell you, Grandmother – USE THE STAIRS!” shrieked the little girl.
“Sorry, dearie,” croaked Grandmother. “I did remember, but I’d already sunk my legs into the floor and it was too late.” She looked around, and realised how close she had been to impaling herself on the prow of the visiting boat. “Ooh, my word!” she chirped. “We’ve got some company!”
Meebrick grinned and waved again, and Grandmother waved back.
“I’ll go and put the kettle on,” she said.
“Thank you, Grandmother,” said the little girl.
Grandmother recovered her cane from where it had stuck in the jelly floor next to her, and wobbled off towards the kitchen.
The little girl glared at the intruders again.
“So who are you, and what are you doing in my laboratory?”
“I am Nodroz the Third,” began Nodroz the Third. Pone rolled his eyes again – he was getting tired of hearing him introduce himself. Nodroz pointed to the plant pot up front, “this is my faithful vegetable companion Yaseez, this…” he pointed at Pone, but then Pone decided to interrupt.
“My name is Pone Crustley,” announced Pone Crustley, “and if anyone tells you I’m called Woshling…” he paused for a second to give Nodroz a warning with one eyebrow, “… they’re telling you lies.”
“You look more like a Woshling to me,” announced the little girl. Pone slumped back against the stove and lost interest in the conversation, while she pointed at Meebrick and demanded to know who he was, and got the usual “it’s a real delight to see you!” greeting (thank goodness he’d taken his breathing tube out now).
“We are seeking to decipher the secrets of Wobble,” intoned Nodroz. “Humnnn.”
“Don’t you swear at me!” snapped the little girl.
“Basically,” chirruped Meebrick, “we don’t have a clue what we’re looking for, if anything, and we’re going for a road trip inside this jelly asteroid thing just for the fun of it. And then we spotted your place – can I just say, I absolutely love what you’ve done with the decor – so we thought we’d drop in and say hi!”
“I see… very well, then. Fortunately you haven’t collided with any of my extremely important scientific equipment. I am Professor-Emeritus Poppy Darlingsby,” announced the small girl. She adjusted her monocle and squinted at Meebrick. He gave a good-natured squint back.
“Um… what are you researching?” Pone asked, as he felt her gaze move over to him.
“Never mind that yet,” said the Professor.
Another very long silence.
This time, it was broken by the sound of shuffling feet and clinking chinaware.
“Here’s the tea!” chimed Grandmother from somewhere nearby.
“Excellent,” said the Professor. She started heading for the short staircase. “If you would all please follow me to the living room?”
*****
I don't plan on posting the whole story on my blog, but if you want to read more then I'm sure I could arrange to send you the back issues and keep you up to date with new chapters as and when they get written =]
(Random aside: for those who read Fort Paradox, we're still waiting for some questions for the new Weekly FAQ feature! Come on, ask questions, darn it!)
- The Colclough
This is a little bit like that, except that I don't have any financial incentive whatsoever, and this particular free sample might addle your brains a bit: I've decided to share with you the newly-penned 12th chapter of a rather odd short story which I've been writing on and off since mid-November (provisionally entitled A Salesman Beneath), just because I feel like it.
I have no idea how much sense this might make to you reading it in isolation, and I'm equally unsure how much sense it might make even in the context of the previous 11 chapters, but here goes anyway...
*****
A few minutes later, Pone found himself being handed one end of a long length of flexible piping, whose other end was attached to the top of the stove. Meebrick and Nodroz each had one too.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“To breathe,” said Nodroz, sounding terribly matter-of-fact.
“What, the stove’s exhaust fumes? Aren’t they usually poisonous?”
“It’s a connective stove,” Nodroz said, with a withering stare as if it should have been plain and obvious.
“Oh, I see: so they’re connective exhaust fumes!” Pone drawled. “But of course. That makes me feel so much better about gassing myself to death, if I can do it connectively.”
“Was that sarcasm?” asked Meebrick.
“Take an educated guess,” snapped Pone.
Nodroz gave them both an even witheringer glare, and stuck the end of his own pipe in his mouth. There followed several minutes of pointedly heavy breathing, as the old man sucked the stove fumes deep inside his system, clearly eager to demonstrate that it would have no ill effects. After the first few breaths, Meebrick chowed down on his pipe, and started tentatively puffing. Neither of them shrivelled up or went purple or turned into a guinea pig, so eventually Pone decided to risk it.
The result was terribly disappointing: the fumes smelled and tasted of absolutely nothing whatsoever. In fact, the gases coming off the stove were cool and fresh and impossibly clear, like what you would expect to be breathing on the top of a huge mountain in the middle of a vast unspoilt wilderness. Pone gave himself another headache on top of the one he already had, trying to work out how it was possible for exhaust fumes to smell so un-exhaust-like. But it didn’t last long, due to the healthful influence of the fumes.
“Are you yet satisfied with your breathing?” asked Nodroz.
Pone nodded very reluctantly, and clung to the railing for dear life as his host turned back to face the wall of bold red jelly overlapping the prow of the boat.
“Come then,” Nodroz mumbled through a mouthful of breathing tube, “Let us go henceforth into the core of Wobble!” He raised his arms in a dramatic gesture, and as if in response the inert front-left engine glimmered back into life. Then he intoned a loud and forceful “HUMNNN!” and flung his arms forwards to signal the intended direction of movement – and the Contradictorium slowly but surely started to push its way deeper into the gelatinous micro-planet.
“By the way,” Pone queried, “why does this asteroid or planet or whatever it is have such a dumb-sounding name?”
“It’s made of jelly, and jelly wobbles,” remarked Nodroz with his usual, irksome serenity, “so they called it ‘Wobble’.”
Pone groaned inwardly beneath the burdensome weight of this new knowledge.
“Bish ishho exhitig!” Meebrick giggled through his breathing tube. And as if that wasn’t undignified enough, he clapped his hands like a little child.
A moment later, Pone found the jelly approaching just inches from his nose.
“What is it with me and jelly lately?” Pone wondered. His hair was still full of blobs of goo from his recent encounter with the invertebrate shoal. But the blobs were soon lost to sight as they amalgamated into the greater mass of the micro-planet Wobble.
The stuff was more yielding than he might have expected, and once it had got itself on the move the Contradictorium seemed to have little trouble forging a path through it. The jelly flowed back into place behind the boat, leaving only a negligible wake of tiny bubbles to show where they had been. Pone became profoundly grateful for the stove hose.
The journey into Wobble seemed to go on for quite a long time, and there weren’t any landmarks on the inside. Pone started to despair of ever escaping. He attempted to distract his suffering brain with thoughts of financial outlays, profit margins, sales commissions and tax bands, and when that failed he turned his thoughts to his paternal aunt and her frankly terrifying collection of tea-cosies. She had thousands upon thousands of them, and was always after more. The surest way of making her happy was to give her another one, and the next surest was to give her a teapot to put inside one so she could display it properly.
Many centuries passed, and what with the lack of landmarks and the impossibly clear air he was breathing, Pone started to feel that he was drifting outside of the space-time continuum altogether. He started to doubt the existence of the outside world, and to wonder if maybe this surreal jelly was all there was, and all there ever had been.
Those centuries were actually two and three-quarter hours.
And then he was rudely pulled back to reality by the sound of Meebrick squealing a few feet away, muffled a bit (but nowhere near enough, Pone thought) by the surrounding semi-solid dessert.
“What’s wrong with the blighter now?” Pone asked himself.
He turned to look, and saw that Meebrick was pointing and staring straight ahead.
Ahead of the ship, deep inside the jelly, he could faintly see the outlines of some sort of transparent structure. There were rooms, and doorways, and what looked like stairs – and he even thought he could glimpse a pot plant or two.
Minutes later, the boat glooped its way out of the wall of a large room inside the jelly, and drifted to a stop in the middle of the floor.
The space was filled with all sorts of scientific equipment – microscopes, telescopes, orreries, burners, test tubes and flasks, rulers and tape measures and callipers, vices and tweezers, and books upon books upon books. It was hard to tell whether everything in the room really was made of copper and bronze, or if it just looked that way because of the red jelly which comprised the walls, floor and ceiling surrounding them. And Pone had been right – in another room at the top of a short, broad staircase, he could see a real, live pot plant. He wondered (with good reason) whether it had a funny name and whether it was going to be rude to him.
And in the middle of it all, not looking remotely pleased about having visitors, stood a very small girl in a long pink dressing gown, with a glowing magenta ponytail and a ferocious scowl. And a monocle, which didn’t really go with the rest of her look.
Meebrick gave an enthusiastic greeting, but sadly forgot to remove the breathing pipe from his mouth first, so it didn’t come out very well. He was glared at like something the cat dragged in. But being Meebrick the misnomer, he wasn’t much bothered by this and just kept on grinning and waving.
“GRANDMOTHER!” bellowed the little girl.
“I am so sorry to intrude,” began Nodroz the Third, “but might I take this opportunity to introduce…”
“GRANDMOTHER! I need you in here RIGHT NOW!”
There was one of those difficult silences.
And then a couple of minutes later, a tiny, hunched old lady oozed out of the ceiling and dropped onto the gelatinous floor just in front of the Contradictorium.
“How many times must I tell you, Grandmother – USE THE STAIRS!” shrieked the little girl.
“Sorry, dearie,” croaked Grandmother. “I did remember, but I’d already sunk my legs into the floor and it was too late.” She looked around, and realised how close she had been to impaling herself on the prow of the visiting boat. “Ooh, my word!” she chirped. “We’ve got some company!”
Meebrick grinned and waved again, and Grandmother waved back.
“I’ll go and put the kettle on,” she said.
“Thank you, Grandmother,” said the little girl.
Grandmother recovered her cane from where it had stuck in the jelly floor next to her, and wobbled off towards the kitchen.
The little girl glared at the intruders again.
“So who are you, and what are you doing in my laboratory?”
“I am Nodroz the Third,” began Nodroz the Third. Pone rolled his eyes again – he was getting tired of hearing him introduce himself. Nodroz pointed to the plant pot up front, “this is my faithful vegetable companion Yaseez, this…” he pointed at Pone, but then Pone decided to interrupt.
“My name is Pone Crustley,” announced Pone Crustley, “and if anyone tells you I’m called Woshling…” he paused for a second to give Nodroz a warning with one eyebrow, “… they’re telling you lies.”
“You look more like a Woshling to me,” announced the little girl. Pone slumped back against the stove and lost interest in the conversation, while she pointed at Meebrick and demanded to know who he was, and got the usual “it’s a real delight to see you!” greeting (thank goodness he’d taken his breathing tube out now).
“We are seeking to decipher the secrets of Wobble,” intoned Nodroz. “Humnnn.”
“Don’t you swear at me!” snapped the little girl.
“Basically,” chirruped Meebrick, “we don’t have a clue what we’re looking for, if anything, and we’re going for a road trip inside this jelly asteroid thing just for the fun of it. And then we spotted your place – can I just say, I absolutely love what you’ve done with the decor – so we thought we’d drop in and say hi!”
“I see… very well, then. Fortunately you haven’t collided with any of my extremely important scientific equipment. I am Professor-Emeritus Poppy Darlingsby,” announced the small girl. She adjusted her monocle and squinted at Meebrick. He gave a good-natured squint back.
“Um… what are you researching?” Pone asked, as he felt her gaze move over to him.
“Never mind that yet,” said the Professor.
Another very long silence.
This time, it was broken by the sound of shuffling feet and clinking chinaware.
“Here’s the tea!” chimed Grandmother from somewhere nearby.
“Excellent,” said the Professor. She started heading for the short staircase. “If you would all please follow me to the living room?”
*****
I don't plan on posting the whole story on my blog, but if you want to read more then I'm sure I could arrange to send you the back issues and keep you up to date with new chapters as and when they get written =]
(Random aside: for those who read Fort Paradox, we're still waiting for some questions for the new Weekly FAQ feature! Come on, ask questions, darn it!)
- 11 For 11 status: 9 down, 2 to go - I reclaim the lead in the race again! Won't be surprised if this is the last time I'm ahead...
- Latest book read: no change since the last post
- Latest film/TV watched: How Do They Do It?
- Latest music listened to: no change since the last post
- Latest food/sweets/whatever eaten: lunch = chicken sandwich, crisps and half an orange
- Programs and web pages currently running: Outlook 2007, Word 2007, Windows Explorer, Skype, Firefox (tabs: MatNav; Blogspot Create Post; Blogspot Dashboard; my last post)
- Webcomics posted today: no change since the last post
- The Colclough
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Ruminations on Fifty-Seven
As I type this sentence, I am losing the "First 11 for '11" blogging race against Hannah 'LikesSheepBaa' Newcombe by 2 posts. I hope to goodness she doesn't post another one before I finish this, or my catching up might become completely impossible.
Anyway, the current score stands at 5-7, which provides yet another piece of evidence to support the already-more-or-less-proven conjecture that the number fifty-seven is in fact stalking me (and certain friends of mine) around the universe. Therefore, I shall take this opportunity to write a blog about the number 57, and explain some of the reasons why I'm so paranoid about it, and why it keeps cropping up in my creative output. Yes, seriously. Read on...
The first two pieces of evidence were supplied by a smallish shunting locomotive and a bottle of tomato sauce, and subsequent sources of corroboration have included video editing software, a games console, and my great-aunt's address.
Back in the days when I used to have a model railway (that's another story), I was mainly interested in collecting locomotives and rolling stock representing the Great Western Railway between the late 19th century and the 1930s. Mainly for aesthetic reasons: the GWR had, in my opinion, the best-looking trains. Some of the Gresley LNER locomotives were quite nice too, but if you take account of the carriages, goods wagons and so on, the GWR won out on the whole. Anyway, anyone who knows about the GWR will know that their most numerous (and arguably most iconic) locomotive type was the '5700' or '57xx' class, a group of compact but disproportionately strong six-wheeled machines mostly used for shunting and branch-line work. There were over 800 of the things in service at one point, and even today they remain one of the most numerous British locomotive classes ever built. No GWR-based model railway is complete without one, and therefore, I had one. Its running number is 5768, and I've still got it.
(As an aside, two other notes of interest about the 57xx pannier tank: those of you whose railway knowledge is derived mostly or entirely from Thomas the Tank Engine will actually already be familiar with the class even if you're not aware of it - Duck is a 57xx. And closer to home, a 57xx (specifically number 5768 - yes, named after my model engine) occupies the background of the first panel in the debut episode of my very short-lived, unpublished, railway-centric comic-strip project Gentlemen of Tarberford, which is where Grace and Caffeine regulars Tom, Edwin, Fred, Ike (alias Jake) and James all made their very first appearances.)
At the same time, I couldn't help noticing (what with the amount of tomato sauce we get through) that Heinz's bottles all had '57 varieties' written on them, for reasons I never really got my head around. There were a few other 57-related things at the time, I think, although I can't remember what they were.
And so the theory was born that the number might have some metaphysical significance. I shared the theory with Tim and Sarah, and then it developed in a slightly more paranoid direction: what if the number was actually following us around on purpose? Well, we've been spotting more and more evidence ever since:
And that's just a tiny little sample of the many, many occasions where that number has popped up in my vicinity. It isn't always straightforward - sometimes it's the numbers 5 and 7 appearing suspiciously close together (like the example I mentioned in my second paragraph here), or other permutations - but that just increases the deviousness of the way the number is doing its stalking.
The funny thing is, though, I don't resent the number 57, even though you might think I would after all this stalking. Our relationship has almost developed into a bizarre, skewed pseudo-friendship (not quite, but almost), and I have deliberately acknowledged the 57 phenomenon on many occasions, including many references to it in my creative output, especially my comic strips.
One or two facts about the number itself:
Right, I think that's probably enough weirdness for one day. And the scary thing is, I've been telling the truth!
And to round off, here's another nice juicy blob of up-to-date stats:
- The Colclough
Anyway, the current score stands at 5-7, which provides yet another piece of evidence to support the already-more-or-less-proven conjecture that the number fifty-seven is in fact stalking me (and certain friends of mine) around the universe. Therefore, I shall take this opportunity to write a blog about the number 57, and explain some of the reasons why I'm so paranoid about it, and why it keeps cropping up in my creative output. Yes, seriously. Read on...
The first two pieces of evidence were supplied by a smallish shunting locomotive and a bottle of tomato sauce, and subsequent sources of corroboration have included video editing software, a games console, and my great-aunt's address.
Back in the days when I used to have a model railway (that's another story), I was mainly interested in collecting locomotives and rolling stock representing the Great Western Railway between the late 19th century and the 1930s. Mainly for aesthetic reasons: the GWR had, in my opinion, the best-looking trains. Some of the Gresley LNER locomotives were quite nice too, but if you take account of the carriages, goods wagons and so on, the GWR won out on the whole. Anyway, anyone who knows about the GWR will know that their most numerous (and arguably most iconic) locomotive type was the '5700' or '57xx' class, a group of compact but disproportionately strong six-wheeled machines mostly used for shunting and branch-line work. There were over 800 of the things in service at one point, and even today they remain one of the most numerous British locomotive classes ever built. No GWR-based model railway is complete without one, and therefore, I had one. Its running number is 5768, and I've still got it.
(As an aside, two other notes of interest about the 57xx pannier tank: those of you whose railway knowledge is derived mostly or entirely from Thomas the Tank Engine will actually already be familiar with the class even if you're not aware of it - Duck is a 57xx. And closer to home, a 57xx (specifically number 5768 - yes, named after my model engine) occupies the background of the first panel in the debut episode of my very short-lived, unpublished, railway-centric comic-strip project Gentlemen of Tarberford, which is where Grace and Caffeine regulars Tom, Edwin, Fred, Ike (alias Jake) and James all made their very first appearances.)
At the same time, I couldn't help noticing (what with the amount of tomato sauce we get through) that Heinz's bottles all had '57 varieties' written on them, for reasons I never really got my head around. There were a few other 57-related things at the time, I think, although I can't remember what they were.
And so the theory was born that the number might have some metaphysical significance. I shared the theory with Tim and Sarah, and then it developed in a slightly more paranoid direction: what if the number was actually following us around on purpose? Well, we've been spotting more and more evidence ever since:
- A year or two ago, I played a couple of idle rounds of darts against myself, and happened to score 57 with one set of darts, and 85 with the other (the number 85 is also important, but not as much as 57).
- Whenever I load Ulead MediaStudio on my current PC (which I still do occasionally, despite having switched most of my film and video production over to Sony Vegas), the progress bar always jumps to 57%, and then to 85% (see? 85 again as well), and then to 100%. The same numbers, every single time.
- I recently discovered that one of my great-aunts lives at house number 57.
- The other day, I happened to walk through the lounge just as someone finished a game on the Wii - with a score of 57 points.
- One of my Christmas presents this year was a WHSmith giftcard whose serial number features the digit pair '57' not once, but twice.
And that's just a tiny little sample of the many, many occasions where that number has popped up in my vicinity. It isn't always straightforward - sometimes it's the numbers 5 and 7 appearing suspiciously close together (like the example I mentioned in my second paragraph here), or other permutations - but that just increases the deviousness of the way the number is doing its stalking.
The funny thing is, though, I don't resent the number 57, even though you might think I would after all this stalking. Our relationship has almost developed into a bizarre, skewed pseudo-friendship (not quite, but almost), and I have deliberately acknowledged the 57 phenomenon on many occasions, including many references to it in my creative output, especially my comic strips.
- I've lost count of the 57 references in Cylinder and Miserable. Among others, the protagonists' house is number 57 (as revealed in a mid-Series-1 episode).
- Grace and Caffeine contains about four occurrences - the ones I can remember are in Strip 061 (where it appears as a statistic in an opinion poll), Strip 112 (as the number of the last song in an out-of-date hymn supplement), Strip 171 (as a statistical fact about a church photocopier) and Strip 178 (where it appears on a hymn board).
- Fort Paradox, bizarrely, has managed not to include a single 57 reference yet, after 32 strips completed and several more scripted. But I expect it'll turn up sooner or later.
- I wrote a reference into the background dialogue in Alpha One's Quantum Shampoo - French is listening to 'Radio 57 FM'.
- It's not my work, but since Tim's in on the theory I'll throw in a mention for his webcomic Brothers in Shells, which has featured at least two or three 57 references in its first 100 strips.
- There have been others, but it's getting late, and I can't be bothered to remember them all and type them all up.
One or two facts about the number itself:
- It has two digits (5 and 7, obviously), both of which are prime numbers.
- It has two factors, apart from itself and 1 (3 and 19), both of which are also prime numbers.
- Its reciprocal 1/57 looks like this in decimal notation: 0.017543859649122807 recurring. Interesting to note that the repeating 18-digit pattern includes the digits 5 and 7 twice each, and in one case right next to each other, albeit reversed (as '75' instead of '57').
- If you convert it to Binary you get 111001. Its Octal form is 71, and its Hexadecimal form is 39, which for some reason makes me want to mention Steps.
Right, I think that's probably enough weirdness for one day. And the scary thing is, I've been telling the truth!
And to round off, here's another nice juicy blob of up-to-date stats:
- 11 For 11 status: 6 down, 5 to go - half-way there, and 1 post behind Hannah
- Latest book read: The Runaway Train (first draft) by Hannah Newcombe
- Latest film/TV watched: Top Gear: Middle East Special and ITV's 'Family Film of the Decade'
- Latest music listened to: um... not sure, but I think it was Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack Series 4 by Murray Gold (yes, him again - I like me some Doctor Who score on the old hi-fi)
- Latest food/sweets/whatever eaten: I think it was fruit pastilles again. Hannah's not the only one with recurring confectionary stats!
- Programs and web pages currently running: Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Create Post; hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com, MatNav)
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1124; Alien President #7 (anyone else think it's a bit ironic that one of those numbers is so huge, and the other is tiny?)
- The Colclough
Friday, 3 December 2010
The Answers!
Last week, I did a little research project in which I tried to work out what proportion of my creative output I've actually got round to sharing with people. The average answer, from four responses, was 51.25% - which has the interesting implication that I've only shared about half of the things I've ever created.
Anywho, for the benefit of anyone who found themself staring at that list and wondering what on earth I was yakking about, I shall now divulge The Answers, i.e. a new version of the list featuring the same 50 names, but now with added notes and things to explain who/what those 50 entities are.
The Primary Culprits
Before going onto the list itself, here's a brief(ish) overview of the major groups:
Universe XGT – a collective handle for a huge continuity co-created with my best friends Tim and Sarah. Some of the more important bits of it have emerged into the public view in the form of stopmotion short films, including Alpha One’s Megalomaniac Quadrilogy, X-Battles GT, and The Probe Has Succeeded, but there’s also a big sprawling mass of largely unpublished back-story, most of which would be bad for your head. Accounts for 10 of the 50 names on the list.
Cylinder and Miserable – my main webcomic; updated five or six times per week from late 2006. Features lots of random weirdness. Accounts for 7 of the 50 names on the list.
Grace and Caffeine – the weekly Christian comic strip which I produced for my church from late 2006 to summer 2010. The principal cast had all appeared in other places first, but Grace and Caffeine was their biggest starring role. Along with some smaller related projects, accounts for 5 of the 50 names on the list.
The Martian Ballet Trilogy – a series of computer-animated films, co-created with David Allwright, and revolving around the career misadventures of an inept Martian called Mike Half-Left. We planned to make a fourth film, but it all seems to have ground to a halt, so I’ve taken to referring to the existing films as a trilogy. Accounts for 4 of the 50 names on the list.
Megastropulodon – a short live-action film made for the final year of my BSc in Media Production, and a TV mini-series which I’m currently writing based on the same concept. The name is borrowed from the big ugly mutant creature at the centre of the story. Accounts for 3 of the 50 names on the list.
Intergalactic Hamsters - my BSc Media Production dissertation film. Well, technically, Intergalactic Hamsters is the film within the film, and my dissertation (full title The Making of "Intergalactic Hamsters") is a spoof behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the collapse of the Intergalactic Hamsters project. Accounts for 2 of the 50 names on the list.
The List Explained
...and here are the notes!
So, there you have it. I hope you feel all enlightened and stuff. And for those who've got catch-up to do, happy reading!
=]
- The Colclough
Anywho, for the benefit of anyone who found themself staring at that list and wondering what on earth I was yakking about, I shall now divulge The Answers, i.e. a new version of the list featuring the same 50 names, but now with added notes and things to explain who/what those 50 entities are.
The Primary Culprits
Before going onto the list itself, here's a brief(ish) overview of the major groups:
Universe XGT – a collective handle for a huge continuity co-created with my best friends Tim and Sarah. Some of the more important bits of it have emerged into the public view in the form of stopmotion short films, including Alpha One’s Megalomaniac Quadrilogy, X-Battles GT, and The Probe Has Succeeded, but there’s also a big sprawling mass of largely unpublished back-story, most of which would be bad for your head. Accounts for 10 of the 50 names on the list.
- Alpha One's Laser Cafe (2008)
- Alpha One's Quantum Shampoo (2009)
- The Probe Has Succeeded (2009)
- X-Battles GT4 (2010)
Cylinder and Miserable – my main webcomic; updated five or six times per week from late 2006. Features lots of random weirdness. Accounts for 7 of the 50 names on the list.
- Cylinder and Miserable (2006 to date)
Grace and Caffeine – the weekly Christian comic strip which I produced for my church from late 2006 to summer 2010. The principal cast had all appeared in other places first, but Grace and Caffeine was their biggest starring role. Along with some smaller related projects, accounts for 5 of the 50 names on the list.
- Grace and Caffeine (2006 to 2010)
The Martian Ballet Trilogy – a series of computer-animated films, co-created with David Allwright, and revolving around the career misadventures of an inept Martian called Mike Half-Left. We planned to make a fourth film, but it all seems to have ground to a halt, so I’ve taken to referring to the existing films as a trilogy. Accounts for 4 of the 50 names on the list.
- Martian Ballet: Fifth Anniversary Special Edition (2003, 2004, 2008)
- Martian Olympics (2006)
- Martian Medicine (2008) is not currently available for online viewing, due to music copyright issues. A HD remastered version with a new score is pending. (Edit, 20th of May 2011: just rediscovered this post and decided to update it with a link to the film, which is now back online as promised)
Megastropulodon – a short live-action film made for the final year of my BSc in Media Production, and a TV mini-series which I’m currently writing based on the same concept. The name is borrowed from the big ugly mutant creature at the centre of the story. Accounts for 3 of the 50 names on the list.
- Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010)
Intergalactic Hamsters - my BSc Media Production dissertation film. Well, technically, Intergalactic Hamsters is the film within the film, and my dissertation (full title The Making of "Intergalactic Hamsters") is a spoof behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the collapse of the Intergalactic Hamsters project. Accounts for 2 of the 50 names on the list.
The List Explained
...and here are the notes!
- Acid Gulps: a dodgy but popular soft drink from the Martian Ballet Trilogy (first appears in Martian Olympics, 2006).
- Albert S. Broccoli: an artificially-sentient broccoli from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears in Series 2, 2008), who acts as manager/butler/chauffeur/whatever to Cylinder the Cylinder.
- Alex Lanning: a biologist from Intergalactic Hamsters (2010); in the original story plan, Alex was supposed to be brilliant, but lacking in dress sense and other social graces, although this didn’t come out very much in the finished film.
- Arthur the Pensioner: a nice little old man, whose only appearance to date was in Arthur & the Punk (2006).
- The Blue Danube, with Walnuts: a random video I made back in 2007, which features me smashing up a tableful of small semi-edible walnuts with a claw hammer, in time to the closing couple of minutes of Strauss’ The Blue Danube waltz. It wasn’t as wasteful as it might seem – we salvaged and ate most of the walnuts afterwards.
- The Binary Triumvirate: an alternative/experimental electronic music trio from Cylinder and Miserable Series 2 (2009).
- Black Antarctic Cryogenics: a huge cryogenics plant located underground in the middle of a desert, from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears at the end of Series 1, 2007).
- Bradley Stanton Park: a blindly patriotic American mountaineer, from a little animation project called Frozen Bones that’s been languishing in ‘development hell’ for quite a while.
- Cylinder the Cylinder: the ‘alpha protagonist’ of Cylinder and Miserable (first appearance 2006); also stars in Fort Paradox (2010 onwards).
- Distant Prayer – Fragment III: one of my very few musical compositions (circa 2005 ish).
- Deep Glass: sculptural work, made from stoneware clay with a hotter-than-usual biscuit firing, and the crushed remains of a Shloer bottle (circa 2006).
- Doctor Murkum: cyborg, drug-addled, hopelessly incompetent wannabe antagonist from Universe XGT, easily identified by his grey environment suit and its bulky helmet and breathing apparatus (first appearance circa 1998).
- Dyngaria: the name of two almost-but-not-quite unrelated stories that I’ve started writing. The first incarnation was years and years ago, and unspeakably bad. The new one is still in its infancy, but much more promising. 'Dyngaria' is also the name of one of the main settings of the newer book.
- Edwin (full name Edwin Leonard Hall): the thin, grumpy old chap with the white hair and the gardening skills, from Grace and Caffeine (2006, first appearance in other stories 2003); also stars in Fort Paradox (2010 onwards).
- The Essence of Fandom: a mixed-media drawing/painting thing I did a couple of years back.
- Emily Arkley: the purple one with the Vespa, from Day-Glo! (2007).
- Empire Theatre, Mars City: the theatre where Mike Half-Left’s troubles began, in the Martian Ballet Trilogy (first appears in the original version of Martian Ballet, 2003).
- Establisher II: the unmanned titular space probe from The Probe Has Succeeded (2009).
- The Fifty-Seven Meme: myself and certain friends of mine have noticed that the number 57 appears more often than most others, sometimes in the most unexpected places, leading to the theory that it is in fact woven into the very fabric of the spacetime continuum, and/or is deliberately stalking us around the universe. I’ve made several intentional ‘57’ references in various media, in a tacit acknowledgement of its presumed metaphysical importance.
- First Dabox: the homeworld of the pragmatically-minded Grud race, in Universe XGT. The orange chap with the five eyes in The Probe Has Succeeded (2009) is a Grud.
- Forkley: a fork-lift-truck type individual, from the ‘Ganaraner’ race of sentient machines in Universe XGT (first appearance circa 1998); also appears in Fort Paradox (2010 onwards).
- Fort Paradox: the name of both a recently-started cross-continuity webcomic, and its principal location. I won’t tell you what the Fort actually is, as that would spoil the surprise for when we reveal it in the comic strip B]
- Gastropo Thrush: a molluscoid athlete from the Martian Ballet Trilogy (first appears in Martian Olympics, 2006).
- Gavin the Head: you don’t want to know. Suffice to say it’s from Universe XGT, and if you’re going to try and comprehend Universe XGT, Gavin the Head is a very bad place to start!
- Greenchester: a little game I wrote in Visual Basic 6 in 2008. Windows only.
- Harry Dixon: sort of cheating, this one: Harry was the main character from the short student film One in a Million, which I directed, from a script by course mate Stephen Boulter (2009).
- Hooper (full name James Richard Boris Montgomery Hooper): long-suffering assistant to the failed megalomaniac villain Alpha One, from Universe XGT. Unlike most of UXGT, Hooper and Alpha’s misadventures have been published: in the stopmotion films Alpha One’s Laser Cafe (2008) and Alpha One’s Quantum Shampoo (2009). A threequel is in production.
- The iKon Cinema: many years ago, back in the days when I used to make towns out of Lego and cereal packets, I decided I wanted to build a cinema. It worked too, sort of, thanks to a system of paper strips with different scenes on them, which could be fed through a little ‘gate’ setup to emulate a screen. The films were a bit rubbish, but it was an achievement at the time. I could show you a picture of the remains, but they're really dilapidated, so it'd be a bit embarrassing.
- I See the Light at the End: my last and greatest sculptural work (to date, anyway… never say never): a 5 x 7 foot mosaic (btw, there’s that number 57 again, see?), built from over 400 custom-designed and hand-made tiles, at Farnborough Sixth Form College (2007).
- Jason Meddings: the reluctant ‘Chosen One’ from Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010).
- Lost in Minehead 2006: the official video from one of our church youth holidays. I didn’t do the camerawork, but the project was turned over to me for post-production.
- Mark Coleridge: student filmmaker protagonist of The Making of “Intergalactic Hamsters” (2010).
- Matilda Ferguson: from a not-yet-published storyline in Cylinder and Miserable (due to appear online in 2011).
- Metaphysical Violation Drive: a type of airship propulsion technology from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears in Series 2, 2008, as part of Cylinder the Cylinder’s new vessel the Excylindrical).
- Mike Half-Left: ill-fated protagonist of the Martian Ballet Trilogy. The serial job-failer first appears in the original version of Martian Ballet, 2003).
- Pascal Davis: a computer-nerd character who first appeared in his own strip, Pascal Davis and the Machines (2005), and then made a few guest appearances in Grace and Caffeine (2007 – 2010).
- The Prayers of Thousands: sculptural work, featuring plaster casts of people’s hands (2005).
- Quantum Shampoo: the titular substance from Alpha One’s Quantum Shampoo (2009) – I won’t tell you what it is here. You should go and watch the movie!
- Redwood 257: one of the locations from a fragmentary script which I’ve been picking at on and off for four-and-a-half years.
- Rhugestian Swamp Dog: an omnivorous egg-laying mammalian creature, the size of a large dog or a small pig, with a long prehensile nose. Those who recognise the species will probably know them as the green thing from The Probe Has Succeeded (2009), but in the wider context of Universe XGT, they are said to hail from the planet Rhugestis, not from Harcom-1, the setting of the stopmotion short.
- Ron Haggard: the self-proclaimed ‘Sidekick’ from Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010).
- The Square: a new-but-unwanted cargo ship surreptitiously rescued from the scrapyard and transformed into a notorious guerrilla warship, in Universe XGT.
- The Suitcase: the favourite biological weapon of the so-called ‘Evil Terrorists of Doom’, from Cylinder and Miserable (first appears in Series 1, 2007).
- Tarberford: setting of the very short-lived comic where most of the main cast of Grace and Caffeine began their existences.
- Tasmin (full name Anna-Beth Tasmin Linden): a new character who I’ve added to the in-development TV-series version of Megastropulodon.
- Tharryk: a massive and impenetrable prison galaxy in Universe XGT.
- Tom (full name Tom Thomason): the nice chap with the hooked nose, the bald scalp, and the liking for tea, often found behind the pulpit of Volesford Free Church in Grace and Caffeine (2006, first appearance in other stories 2003). Also stars in the animated short film Goin’ Teapotty (2009).
- Turbo Gran: aged but invincible protagonist of the interactive short film of the same name (2008).
- TW-A42: a subcategory of the Doorwarden-series robots. The A42 itself hasn’t yet made any public appearance, but it will soon enough, and one of its successors, the TW-C75, appeared in Vs. Doorwarden (2003) and its sequel (2005).
- West Spottlington: a largeish fictional town fifteen miles from Volesford, which is mentioned a few times in Grace and Caffeine (2008-ish onwards), and is also the setting of Megastropulodon Attacks! (2010) – although I couldn’t really say whether or not these two stories both take place in the same version of the town, or if they just happen to share the same name. It’s never been stated in any published film or comic strip, but I've also decided that West Spottlington is the home of Pascal Davis.
So, there you have it. I hope you feel all enlightened and stuff. And for those who've got catch-up to do, happy reading!
=]
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Weird Child.
Little brother and sister each had a friend over to dinner today. Had spaghetti, then trifle.
Sister's friend picked at the trifle (claimed she'd never seen or heard of it before - the poor deprived little mite!), and eventually decided she didn't really like it all that much. After eating most of it anyway as part of the decision-making process, that is.
But then someone passed her what was left of the sugar-snap peas (ick), and she happily ate the whole lot.
So, she likes sugar-snap peas better than trifle. This is bizarre and upsetting, but still sort of understandable - after all, some people don't like damp sponge cake, and others don't like cold custard.
But then, just as I was digesting this piece of weirdness, Mum tells me something even stranger: namely, that one of little sister's other friends likes cucumber better than chocolate.
This I am not sure I can handle.
I have a very definite view on the raison d'etre of cucumbers: they exist for the sole purpose of adding crunch to tuna sandwiches, which are otherwise a bit squishy and dull. Outside of a tuna sandwich, a cucumber is a strange and meaningless thing. Cucumbers are never, ever, under any circumstances an alternative to chocolate, and it is morally wrong to think otherwise.
I'm not sure I can handle much more of this...
- The Colclough
Sister's friend picked at the trifle (claimed she'd never seen or heard of it before - the poor deprived little mite!), and eventually decided she didn't really like it all that much. After eating most of it anyway as part of the decision-making process, that is.
But then someone passed her what was left of the sugar-snap peas (ick), and she happily ate the whole lot.
So, she likes sugar-snap peas better than trifle. This is bizarre and upsetting, but still sort of understandable - after all, some people don't like damp sponge cake, and others don't like cold custard.
But then, just as I was digesting this piece of weirdness, Mum tells me something even stranger: namely, that one of little sister's other friends likes cucumber better than chocolate.
This I am not sure I can handle.
I have a very definite view on the raison d'etre of cucumbers: they exist for the sole purpose of adding crunch to tuna sandwiches, which are otherwise a bit squishy and dull. Outside of a tuna sandwich, a cucumber is a strange and meaningless thing. Cucumbers are never, ever, under any circumstances an alternative to chocolate, and it is morally wrong to think otherwise.
I'm not sure I can handle much more of this...
- The Colclough
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
That's Not Very Coherent
I tried to access my blog updates list just now, and I got this:
Someone's been drink-writing again. It should be illegal 8p
Um... yeah, nothing important to say this morning. Just throwing that one out there for my own amusement.
Did you like Megastropulodon?
- The Colclough
Someone's been drink-writing again. It should be illegal 8p
Um... yeah, nothing important to say this morning. Just throwing that one out there for my own amusement.
Did you like Megastropulodon?
- The Colclough
Thursday, 30 September 2010
The blog you've all been waiting for!
This blog post brings good news: as of this evening, the long-anticipated Megastropulodon Attacks! Director's Cut is available to view online, for free, complete and unabridged.
The only catch is that I had to cut the film in half to put it on YouTube, as they only allow videos up to 15 minutes long, and the film clocks in at 15 minutes and 48.48 seconds.
So, I uploaded the first half yesterday, but half-way through processing the second video the uploader crashed, and my whole web connection ground almost to a halt for the rest of the day. So I tried again this morning and left the computer chewing over the issue while I went to Legoland for the day with Mum and my younger siblings. And this time, it worked! I got back to find one of those nice green notification boxes telling me that the upload was successful, etc etc.
And now, without further ado: here are the videos! I hope you like them.
Part 1
Part 2
So, there you go. I must say, it was nice to be able to end my month's blogging on a positive note!
- The Colclough
The only catch is that I had to cut the film in half to put it on YouTube, as they only allow videos up to 15 minutes long, and the film clocks in at 15 minutes and 48.48 seconds.
So, I uploaded the first half yesterday, but half-way through processing the second video the uploader crashed, and my whole web connection ground almost to a halt for the rest of the day. So I tried again this morning and left the computer chewing over the issue while I went to Legoland for the day with Mum and my younger siblings. And this time, it worked! I got back to find one of those nice green notification boxes telling me that the upload was successful, etc etc.
And now, without further ado: here are the videos! I hope you like them.
Part 1
Part 2
So, there you go. I must say, it was nice to be able to end my month's blogging on a positive note!
- The Colclough
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)