Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 November 2015
Privacy
Over at The What & The Why, I'm talking about internet privacy and the Government's Investigatory Powers Bill.
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
The Gods of the Internet Don't like Cartoons.
The gods of the internet don't like cartoons. This is something I've noticed in the approximately two months I've been back, trying to write or draw something new for the blog every single day. If I write a blog post, the gods will generally look my way. They send their minions to scurry around the article, rip out the keywords, and then transmit these to the other minions that start to send traffic my way.
However, if I draw a cartoon, the gods aren't happy and their minions don't do their work. They don't have easy keywords to manipulate, so they don't then trigger the other minions to send people over here. The whole thing is strange and without logic. It's also extremely unfair to anybody who puts effort into drawing a cartoon.
Last night's doodle took me, perhaps, the best part of four or five hours to draw and is therefore probably no longer a doodle. It started around 7.30pm. I was feeling tired and just wanting to play around with the proportions of Nigel Farage's head. His head is something I want to master drawing and this wasn't meant to be a finished cartoon. However, around 9pm I saw that the story of Farage's meetings with Desmond and the head quickly became a body. I wanted to draw it in the spirit of those horrible porn mags that were once passed around the schoolyard as though they were the high watermark of erotica; the kind of thing that had ugly women hanging their sagging boobs out of the back of a Ford Cortina. However, try as I might, I couldn't get Nigel to look quite that tawdry as that so I just reduced him to an ugly set of genitals. Looking back, I should have left his socks on.
About midnight, I was still tired but still in the mood to draw so I quickly drew Richard Desmond. It didn't take me long because I guess few people could say what he looks like and I don't know his face well enough to have a sense of my capturing any recognisable features. Finally, I added a few shadows, which I borrowed/lifted/stole straight from the great Gerald Scarfe who uses shadows particularly well as a framing device.
Not that Google's gods would have been interested in any of this when I posted the cartoon. However, now I've put all this into words, perhaps they'll have something to chew on.
***
This afternoon I have to head out but, once home, I hope to finally put the finishing touches to version 1.1 of Shuffleboard King. The problem is that I've changed so many things, I fear that I'll have to give it a thorough testing before I can upload it to the Play store. The ad revenue is coming in but very slowly. I'd intended the next version to be the paid-for version I'd actually earn a little from but I'll probably end up giving it away. Google have now introduced a policy that all developers selling products on the Play Store must provide their home address which will be visible on the store. It's something that nearly the entire development community is angry about and has already seen many small developers quit Android development in favour of Apple. It's typical, however, that the one way I might have earned a little from the months of work on this game is now blocked off to me.
Isn't it always the way? The small guy always gets screwed. Amazon wants us to sell our books for pennies and now Google want us to give our home addresses away to anybody who fancies sending me crap for all the crap I've done in the past. I really don't want to spend the next few years, tearing up UKIP newsletters because some clever sod thought it would be funny to send them my name and address.
I'm so desperate that I woke up with the idea of publishing a book on Amazon that I've had written/illustrated for months but will now never see the light of day. I might as well publish it before it becomes completely outdated. Earning pennies is surely better than earning nothing. Or is that how all saps think? I don't know. The whole thing is so damn confusing. Yesterday, I was visited by an engineer who came to install a new modem. His life seemed to much easier. He just spends his day installing modems and fixes TV installations and he earns what is euphemistically called a 'shit load'. At night, I guess, he drinks a lot. Everything about him said: heavy drinker. I guess I should have got into that game a long time ago. Then I might not now be looking at a life that I've utterly ruined by trying to be different. Some days if feels like I can do so much and have so many skills yet I know that as soon as I walk into a job centre they'd reduce me down to a big fat zero. They say all artists suffer for their art and that's great except I don't think of myself as an artist. Artists are those cool guys and girls with talent. I'm just me, creating the stuff that makes me extremely happy to create. At the time and moment I write this, it feels like the rest of the world looks my way and mutters 'what a complete shmuck'.
However, if I draw a cartoon, the gods aren't happy and their minions don't do their work. They don't have easy keywords to manipulate, so they don't then trigger the other minions to send people over here. The whole thing is strange and without logic. It's also extremely unfair to anybody who puts effort into drawing a cartoon.
Last night's doodle took me, perhaps, the best part of four or five hours to draw and is therefore probably no longer a doodle. It started around 7.30pm. I was feeling tired and just wanting to play around with the proportions of Nigel Farage's head. His head is something I want to master drawing and this wasn't meant to be a finished cartoon. However, around 9pm I saw that the story of Farage's meetings with Desmond and the head quickly became a body. I wanted to draw it in the spirit of those horrible porn mags that were once passed around the schoolyard as though they were the high watermark of erotica; the kind of thing that had ugly women hanging their sagging boobs out of the back of a Ford Cortina. However, try as I might, I couldn't get Nigel to look quite that tawdry as that so I just reduced him to an ugly set of genitals. Looking back, I should have left his socks on.
About midnight, I was still tired but still in the mood to draw so I quickly drew Richard Desmond. It didn't take me long because I guess few people could say what he looks like and I don't know his face well enough to have a sense of my capturing any recognisable features. Finally, I added a few shadows, which I borrowed/lifted/stole straight from the great Gerald Scarfe who uses shadows particularly well as a framing device.
Not that Google's gods would have been interested in any of this when I posted the cartoon. However, now I've put all this into words, perhaps they'll have something to chew on.
***
This afternoon I have to head out but, once home, I hope to finally put the finishing touches to version 1.1 of Shuffleboard King. The problem is that I've changed so many things, I fear that I'll have to give it a thorough testing before I can upload it to the Play store. The ad revenue is coming in but very slowly. I'd intended the next version to be the paid-for version I'd actually earn a little from but I'll probably end up giving it away. Google have now introduced a policy that all developers selling products on the Play Store must provide their home address which will be visible on the store. It's something that nearly the entire development community is angry about and has already seen many small developers quit Android development in favour of Apple. It's typical, however, that the one way I might have earned a little from the months of work on this game is now blocked off to me.
Isn't it always the way? The small guy always gets screwed. Amazon wants us to sell our books for pennies and now Google want us to give our home addresses away to anybody who fancies sending me crap for all the crap I've done in the past. I really don't want to spend the next few years, tearing up UKIP newsletters because some clever sod thought it would be funny to send them my name and address.
I'm so desperate that I woke up with the idea of publishing a book on Amazon that I've had written/illustrated for months but will now never see the light of day. I might as well publish it before it becomes completely outdated. Earning pennies is surely better than earning nothing. Or is that how all saps think? I don't know. The whole thing is so damn confusing. Yesterday, I was visited by an engineer who came to install a new modem. His life seemed to much easier. He just spends his day installing modems and fixes TV installations and he earns what is euphemistically called a 'shit load'. At night, I guess, he drinks a lot. Everything about him said: heavy drinker. I guess I should have got into that game a long time ago. Then I might not now be looking at a life that I've utterly ruined by trying to be different. Some days if feels like I can do so much and have so many skills yet I know that as soon as I walk into a job centre they'd reduce me down to a big fat zero. They say all artists suffer for their art and that's great except I don't think of myself as an artist. Artists are those cool guys and girls with talent. I'm just me, creating the stuff that makes me extremely happy to create. At the time and moment I write this, it feels like the rest of the world looks my way and mutters 'what a complete shmuck'.
Monday, 3 November 2014
Under The Rock
Woke up dreading the coming day. Not that I have anything out of the ordinary to do but the game being live makes me uneasy. I had a restless night, wondering about how it's performed. I always feel like this when something I've poured my heart into is suddenly out there. I just want to crawl under a rock and not look how my work is faring. I guess I'm not really suited to the harsh reality of internet life. I appreciate the good people enormously and it's why I do this. I feel lifted by every generous comment and email.
Good people make me feel better about the world and I know there are plenty of good people out there. I've been very blessed in my time as a blogger to have contact with many bright, encouraging, enthusiastic, and generous souls. I've also had the misfortune of attracting the scorn of a few whose vengeful ugliness really breaks my spirits. There really are too many Welsh Rottweilers in the world.
The outcome of yesterday was my releasing version 1.0.1 of the game. I'm taking an ambitious approach to my version numbers. The first 1 represents major alterations to the game. So, if I add a new big exciting feature, such as a new game mode, that number will increase to 2. The 0 will only increase when I add smaller but key features, such as new menu options or I fix some large bug. Last night I increased the last number, from a 0 to a 1 since I fixed a small but dumb mistake I'd made, positioning an important button in the space occupied by the ads. That last number represents everyday bug fixes. I expect it to get into double figures very quickly, possibly by early afternoon...
The other outcome of day 1 was my first look at my advertising stats. The numbers were higher than expected (due entirely to Tim Worstall, many thanks Tim) but the income depressingly oval shaped. I don't understand it but I hope it will increase in the coming days and weeks. I never did this to make a fortune. It's more about achieving a goal and raising my competence as a programmer. However, I'd like to think that I'd get money for allowing people to paste their ads on my game. At the moment, if feels like I'm providing a charitable service to billionaires.
I'm honestly at a loss as to what to do next. I had a report from Barman who says that it's too difficult to throw the pucks the length of the board. I now have to go through my code very carefully, trying to figure out if I've overlooked anything that would make the throw power device dependent. The two main things that change from device to device are screen resolution and processor speed. But since neither should affect my calculations, I can't see what it could be. I could increase the power of the throws by any amount I like but I've spent weeks carefully tuning them to a point which doesn't break the game's physics. Time in computer games is not linear but discrete. A moving object doesn't have every moment of its path calculated to an almost atomic scale. Like slowing down a movie, objects leap through space. In a physics simulation, the objects also leap through space (but, theoretically, the gaps are much smaller) and if they're moving quickly, they can simply leap through other objects because the computer never examined the time-frame where the two objects would have collided. Of course, there are ways to calculate these things more carefully but it requires so much more computer power that, in the context of a simple game, it's unworkable.
However, that's my day. Solving a problem which I'm not entirely sure how to solve.
I drew some cartoons last night but they're lousy.
I'm going to hide back under my rock.
Good people make me feel better about the world and I know there are plenty of good people out there. I've been very blessed in my time as a blogger to have contact with many bright, encouraging, enthusiastic, and generous souls. I've also had the misfortune of attracting the scorn of a few whose vengeful ugliness really breaks my spirits. There really are too many Welsh Rottweilers in the world.
The outcome of yesterday was my releasing version 1.0.1 of the game. I'm taking an ambitious approach to my version numbers. The first 1 represents major alterations to the game. So, if I add a new big exciting feature, such as a new game mode, that number will increase to 2. The 0 will only increase when I add smaller but key features, such as new menu options or I fix some large bug. Last night I increased the last number, from a 0 to a 1 since I fixed a small but dumb mistake I'd made, positioning an important button in the space occupied by the ads. That last number represents everyday bug fixes. I expect it to get into double figures very quickly, possibly by early afternoon...
The other outcome of day 1 was my first look at my advertising stats. The numbers were higher than expected (due entirely to Tim Worstall, many thanks Tim) but the income depressingly oval shaped. I don't understand it but I hope it will increase in the coming days and weeks. I never did this to make a fortune. It's more about achieving a goal and raising my competence as a programmer. However, I'd like to think that I'd get money for allowing people to paste their ads on my game. At the moment, if feels like I'm providing a charitable service to billionaires.
I'm honestly at a loss as to what to do next. I had a report from Barman who says that it's too difficult to throw the pucks the length of the board. I now have to go through my code very carefully, trying to figure out if I've overlooked anything that would make the throw power device dependent. The two main things that change from device to device are screen resolution and processor speed. But since neither should affect my calculations, I can't see what it could be. I could increase the power of the throws by any amount I like but I've spent weeks carefully tuning them to a point which doesn't break the game's physics. Time in computer games is not linear but discrete. A moving object doesn't have every moment of its path calculated to an almost atomic scale. Like slowing down a movie, objects leap through space. In a physics simulation, the objects also leap through space (but, theoretically, the gaps are much smaller) and if they're moving quickly, they can simply leap through other objects because the computer never examined the time-frame where the two objects would have collided. Of course, there are ways to calculate these things more carefully but it requires so much more computer power that, in the context of a simple game, it's unworkable.
However, that's my day. Solving a problem which I'm not entirely sure how to solve.
I drew some cartoons last night but they're lousy.
I'm going to hide back under my rock.
Friday, 28 June 2013
The Large Greasy Bucket Called Humanity
I’ve probably written one, two, ten or twenty posts like this one yet rarely publish any. They always sound like a moan when they’re actually an attempt to express sheer disbelief at the things I discover.
No matter how much effort I put into writing or drawing original and good (okay, that’s questionable) content for this blog, the hoped-for traffic rarely arrives. My illusion that intelligent people with good (hopefully warped) humour will find their way here is shattered when I look at my total of page views. It can be stuck for hours and then suddenly I’ll have a hit and I’m delighted until I realise that the visitor is looking for ‘pornography’ or ‘3D porn’ or ‘plywood sex’ (don’t ask!) or ‘leather fetish’ or ‘Clare Balding in the nude’.
The pageview number sticks again until another hit comes in. Somebody has just searched for ‘Daniel Radcliffe’s cock’.
Silence. Many minutes pass. Another hit: ‘long+neck+woman+sex’.
Half an hour later, another hit: ‘secretary t*ts out getting f****d you tube’. I’ve edited that one, not because I’m prudish but because I don’t want to become the internet’s number one go-to resource for that particular term. I once wrote a post where I complained about the local cycle route into Warrington being blocked at one point by taxi drivers taking prostitutes into the bushes. I’ve now become the top internet resource for people wanting to know if there are any prostitutes in Warrington town centre. Well, there aren’t. They’re all hiding in the bushes along the bloody cycle paths.
Okay, not all visitors are quite that bad (although the above examples are just from today) and my traffic is better than I’m suggesting. Thanks to seven of you I can at least say I have regular readers. People do also arrive here from Google looking for more intelligent things than ‘rubber sex truss’ (another gem from today). However, running a website really does give you a privileged view of human nature and what you see is routinely so depraved that, some days, it makes you wonder why we even bother.
As a species we’re clearly devolving and the process won’t stop until we’re just a large greasy bucket of primal sex juice labelled ‘humanity’.
No matter how much effort I put into writing or drawing original and good (okay, that’s questionable) content for this blog, the hoped-for traffic rarely arrives. My illusion that intelligent people with good (hopefully warped) humour will find their way here is shattered when I look at my total of page views. It can be stuck for hours and then suddenly I’ll have a hit and I’m delighted until I realise that the visitor is looking for ‘pornography’ or ‘3D porn’ or ‘plywood sex’ (don’t ask!) or ‘leather fetish’ or ‘Clare Balding in the nude’.
The pageview number sticks again until another hit comes in. Somebody has just searched for ‘Daniel Radcliffe’s cock’.
Silence. Many minutes pass. Another hit: ‘long+neck+woman+sex’.
Half an hour later, another hit: ‘secretary t*ts out getting f****d you tube’. I’ve edited that one, not because I’m prudish but because I don’t want to become the internet’s number one go-to resource for that particular term. I once wrote a post where I complained about the local cycle route into Warrington being blocked at one point by taxi drivers taking prostitutes into the bushes. I’ve now become the top internet resource for people wanting to know if there are any prostitutes in Warrington town centre. Well, there aren’t. They’re all hiding in the bushes along the bloody cycle paths.
Okay, not all visitors are quite that bad (although the above examples are just from today) and my traffic is better than I’m suggesting. Thanks to seven of you I can at least say I have regular readers. People do also arrive here from Google looking for more intelligent things than ‘rubber sex truss’ (another gem from today). However, running a website really does give you a privileged view of human nature and what you see is routinely so depraved that, some days, it makes you wonder why we even bother.
As a species we’re clearly devolving and the process won’t stop until we’re just a large greasy bucket of primal sex juice labelled ‘humanity’.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
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