Because I'm bored and more than a little antsy today for some reason: the thoroughly-undocumented Motivational Poster Generator and Alignment Chart Generator. If interest materializes, I may just properly, er, label the forms to the point where things are a bit clearer. For now, let me endorse the trial-and-error style. You just might find something you weren't expecting.

Note: this is so pre-alpha it's right back around again to being omega. Consider it not even a work in progress, but more like a half-completed thought that someone didn't quite get around to finishing before walking away. Hopefully that doesn't end up being the case, but.... ( CV stands for.... )

Here's the other project I was working on (and managed to finish before we've even settled on a team for the NCAA dynasty project): a new TV computer. ( With aesthetics in mind this time. )

And because I've not done this (I don't think) for a while, here's an antique piece of webcrap: the Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Maker (also takes a URL parameter: http://tech.jmc.ksu.edu/pirate.php?urlname=cnn.com, for example). If you're into that sorta thing; God knows I understand if pirate-speak pegged your tedious-meter five years ago. Me, I prefer muh.

Still, there it is; if you want, knock yourself out.

( My Hallomeme, let me show you it. )This'll be the usual suggestions-plz post; I've got enough going on that I'm not going to add anything to the code unless it's requested. (And yes, a good chunk of the data is raw random-adjective/random-noun and borders on Dada if not pure nonsense, if the two can be distinguished.) There's already a ton of raw data -- some of which is actually recursive -- but there's always room for moar.

Edit: Added blues names and names inspired by Space Mutiny.

So the 2008 NFL season has begun and I managed to let my Flash helmet generator go utterly untouched in the offseason, despite figuring out a sneaky way to get multi-colored logos into the mix. Maybe later. Right now I've got a bug bite on my left temple and it itches like all holy hell so now it's all red and I look fantastically freaky, even for me. Which is a good reason to abhor society, stay in and perform acts of mass diversion all weekend, I s'pose. Like I need a reason.

Here's an idea of how Picspam Classic would work.

Locally-hosted images, no hotlinking. Unfortunately, these are all pics I've dumped from my web-wanderings into one directory with no information as to their origins. Some are from picspam, some from Digg or Boing Boing or my inimitable f-list.

Consensus seems to be forming that the best picspam solution would be a synthesis of these two approaches -- host the images locally to prevent hotlinking, keep the links to the original posts for credit. I can see that, but I'm still adverse to local hosting, if only because then the original poster doesn't know their images are being seen at all, and that's a worse surprise to happen upon than following hotlinking trails, I think. I dunno. Maybe I'm overthinking this.

I just need a few more dramallamas before the noise becomes too much for my attention span to deal with.

Anyhow. How does this work? ( 29 pics below.... )

Am going to have to rerender the Shark Week video; the hammerhead is leaving digital artifacts, due entirely to me choosing the wrong codec (damn you, Cinepak), so I'm now rendering it to a .jpg sequence. Plus side of that is I can render it in chunks and not have to have five uninterrupted hours to render a 33 second sequence. (The background music for the sequence is Genesis' "Submarine," and while I considered making a full-length video for that as an Easter egg, a 5:15 clip would be around 9500 frames. Mmmmmaybe later.)

Had a dream that I was eating at Alan Moore's place and he was handing around bread and a basket of very fine cheeses. I like Alan Moore. More than just his works, though, I like the idea of Alan Moore, that someone with such talent could be so curmudgeonly toward the commercial success that adaptations of his work have found, the whole worshiping-the-snake-god-Glycon thing, the fact that he looks like the portrait of God as a young man.... I simply can't imagine what a conversation with the man must be like. It's a pity that I've become reluctant to travel, because I would like Alan Moore to give me cheese.

Been playing through a franchise in Madden '08, mainly because I'm still giddy that the Chargers actually have a powerhouse team now, and I don't have to rebuild from the ground up in the first year. We're currently in our third year, having won the Superb Owl twice now (St. Louis actually gave us a challenge in the second one, mainly due to losing both Philip Rivers and LaDainian Tomlinson at season's end -- but Darren Sproles is a hell of a fallback). But the strangest message came up after the second season's end -- the New Orleans Saints relocated to Mexico City and became the Mexico City Green Wave. First time I've seen a team relocate, much less to south of the border. DEY TOOK OUR JERBS!

Edit: Further season-three Maddening: after winning the Superb Owl again, in a blowout against the Rams (we upgraded our secondary), the Mexico City Green Wave relocated...to Mexico City and became the Green Wave. Huh? Coach Norv Turner resigned, so I immediately signed the highest-ranked available coach: Marty Schottenheimer. Heh. Bite me, AJ Smith. Unfortunately, in attempting to move into post-season player retirements, the game informed me that...nobody retired. At all. And then the game stuck. So I lost that entire season. Grrr....

( No new logos, but reengineered interface.... )

There's one tiny but nagging bug I need to fix (hint: it has to do with the color labels), but it's inching to where I want it to be. I finally got the randomize button to change the color swatches, and there just aren't words in English for how happy that makes me.

A little late, but at least it's still November: I'm linking to the NaNoWriMo Random Data Output Generator. If I was more clever and less exhausted I would've dreamed up a clever acronym or slick-sounding name for the thing. I'm not calling it NaNoWriMoRaDaOuGen, as that sounds more like an attempt to recap the Battle of the Bulge using voice-generated sound effects.

Still, here's whatever this stoopid thing does: It creates names for random cities, company names, drugs, Harry Potter books, superheroes, universities, and Wu-Tang Clan members. It also makes semi-plausible and barely-technically-correct haikus and US postal addresses. It can create random-esque names for American men or women, and it can create them with their frequency dependent on their occurrence in the 1990 US Census -- so that a "Bob Smith" is more likely to occur than a "LaDainian Tomlinson," for example.

Also generates "mission names," the random-adjective/random-noun combos I adore so dearly, like Operation Boring Deflation or Operation Degenerate Sucker.

Am taking suggestions for more. Especially for you NaNoers (God, that just looks obnoxious, I can't imagine saying it aloud) people writing your novels now -- what do you wish you had at your disposal?