by simon baird

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

nooooo...! #minecraft

(warning, boring story follows).

so i have a little single player world. i haven't been there there
long. i found an amazing cave a few minutes walk away from my base. i
explored it for a while and loaded up on iron and coal, carefully
marking my path so i could find my way back up. (there was some gold
there too but i hadn't made an iron pick yet).

it was getting late (irl) so I decided to go back home. got almost
to the surface when i was ambushed by a skeleton! i noobishly
had no bacon or other means to restore health and i ended up full of
arrows and dead. when i respawned it was daylight (thankfully) so i
bolted as quick as i could back to the spot to get my loot before it
disappeared.

but i couldn't find the entrance! it was kind of hard to see; just a
flat hole in grass and i hadn't had the sense to mark it. eventually i
found it but it was too late and all my stuff was gone. this includes
a heap of glass that i had made and all my torches, my tools, my wood,
some flint. everything. :(

(the end)

holy crap (kyü)

Watch KYU and other great gigs on Moshcam.

Monday, October 25, 2010

this could be an amazing new band: kyü

listen to pixiphony on their myspace. kind of
bat-for-lashes-vs-animal-collective-y:
http://www.myspace.com/kyusounds
friday show in brisbane:
http://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=17821
itunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/au/album/kyu/id391988362
(i will let you know if the hype is justified)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924 - 2010)

ob mandelbrot video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGxbhdr3w2I
the photo parts are a little tacky LAME but i like the way there is zooming, panning and rotation (instead of just the traditional endless zoom)

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

minecraft

i might try to explain to you how amazing this game is. but not now. now it's just these links, (which don't really explain it either):

a fan's attempt at a trailer:
crafting guide

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

fremnet manor by night


my first ever diamond

fremnet help me shore it up so i could mine it without the diamond falling into lava

beginning_of_fortnight method for Ruby on Rails

You might know that Rails provides a bunch of useful extensions to the Time class with methods like beginning_of_week, beginning_of_month, etc.

For my application (a thing with fortnightly billing periods) I wanted to define a beginning of fortnight method to consistently calculate the beginning (and end) of a fortnight. Here's how it ended up (both short and sweet):

(Note that there's no special reason to use epoch. Any other day would work just as well probably).

Does it work?

Put beginning_of_fortnight.rb in config/initializers.

Note that there is already a Numeric#fortnights method in ActiveSupport so we can use things like 2.fortnights without needing any extentions.

sleigh bells!

tell 'em (track 1)
never has a song intro more effectively communicated the message "WAKE THE EFF UP AND LISTEN TO THIS! :)"

riot rhythm (track 3)
mad chromatic gee-tar riff ftw

rill rill (track 7)
delicious summery chill-out without even trying

and the rest of it is as good

check it out

Sleigh Bells
Treats (2010)
(Content owner: Liberation Music)

Monday, October 04, 2010

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Friday, October 01, 2010

night 4 (minecraft)

My cave hideout has a top storey lookout and a walled courtyard.

Pic 1: "everything under control here. stupid exploder below me isn't going anywhere. stupid zombie at the back is just roaming up and down outside my wall.

Pic 2: HOLY WHAT THE.. ZOMBIE CLIMBING UP TO GET ME..?!  AIIEEEE..

Then I think it started shooting me with arrows.