A Park and A Wheel

So last month (during the cherry blossom season) I went to a park with the camera in order to capture one or two of the trees in bloom.

I completely forgot about the picture until yesterday, when I had a day off and ventured into another park without the trees.

Some of these are from before - some from yesterday.  It's up to you to choose which are from which.

It wouldn't be a set of pictures from me without a black and white one.  This shows the texture of this rock pretty nicely I think.  Uninteresting for all but me, but this is my blog so tough.

Kasai Rinkai Koen has a lot of poppies blooming at the moment.  I don't know why; they certainly weren't there last year.

Maybe it changes yearly.

This is another shot of the same set of fields.

The ferris wheel will make a comeback later in the post.

This outcropping looked pretty nice with the reflection so I just took a quick snap.  It turned out to be one of my favourites.

This is a heron from a month or so ago.  He didn't seem to be too perturbed by the people passing by, we even saw him catching a couple of fish.

Bear in mind my lens is only a very mild zoom.

This blossom is pretty indicative of the millions of other cherry blossoms around Japan.  Once you've seen one of them, you've pretty much seen them all.

Having said that, when they're dropping they do look pretty incredible.

See?  This is a slightly lighter version of the one above.

I think this is a heron.  I've no idea what type.  It might not even be a heron, I don't know.  This one was slightly more shy, and the camera struggled with the whites so there's not much detail in the feathers.  Having said that, it's amazing how close you can get if you just go slowly.

And this is the next vision of the ferris wheel replete with bad elevator music.

Link Here!

And that's all for today.

The Election Point

So as of a few days ago, UKIP are gaining ground in the political sphere.  This concerns a few people in the UK because they're so blatantly insular and racist.  As a result they want no part of Europe which is probably a bad idea for the UK economy, even if it's good for the psyche of the insecure.

However, that is not the point.  The crazy policies and nazi tattoos of the UKIP candidates aren't even the point.

Everyone is bemoaning the destruction of the 'moral fibre,' of the average UK citizen - voting UKIP being seen as the indication of such.  If you voted UKIP it means you are a racist whose right to vote should be revoked (how ironic) along with your right to breathe (the number of facebook comments along those lines is hilarious).

Those who make these comments are all 0-30 years old with facebook profiles.  (All being, in this case, hyperbole (for those who can no longer distinguish the difference between what is sarcasm and what isn't)).

Unsurprisingly these people don't quite understand that for the last few decades the established pair of parties have consistently, systematically, fucked the entire country over; again and again.  This eventually led to the liberal democrat party coming into power (albeit jointly).  Now brace yourself for the surprise of a lifetime: they lied about university fees (among other things) and fucked their voters over.

I know, you're picking yourself up off the floor with regards to that one.

In the off-case that you don't want to be buggered by a political party, who do you vote for now?  Labour breeds war criminals and the lowest social mobility we've seen in decades.  Tories step on your throat to elevate themselves just that little bit closer to the sun.  The Lib Dems lie.  

UKIP are completely untested, which means anything they say can't be refuted with hard evidence and as such, are the only credible party running today.

There have been a million and one comparisons both oblique and overt, between UKIP and the nazi party.  And you know what, for the first time in internet history they're apt.  The nazi party came about because Germany was increasingly downtrodden - the sense of identity, their sense of value (both economic and personal) was at rock bottom.  Then along came someone who promised to restore all of that.  The previous governments had failed, then along came the person to save them.

Compare that to UKIP.  The country is as poor as it's ever been (both morally and economically (bear in mind that just because the super rich in London skew the average statistics for the country as a whole, doesn't mean those living in poor parts of the north aren't worse off now that 20 years ago, and there are far more of them than you) and there is literally no hope for them.  They have no option but to vote for the party which purports to serve them the best.

So who is to blame?  It's not the person who hasn't been served by the various parties in the past, it's the cohort of scummy pricks that have bled the country dry to finance their Mercedes and and holidays to Barbados.

I dislike UKIP for many of the same reasons others do, but they are a symptom of the problems in England, not the cause.

Nothing to Report, Situation Normal

I have absolutely nothing to write about at the moment.

I urge you to go and watch the video I posted in the previous entry - I can't quantify the kind of enjoyment I get out of making videos like that.  Regardless of the outcome!

I'm still incapable of sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time; I think it's because of the incredible lack of anything so I've started a new project.  The Unreal Engine guys have released their engine for 20 USD a month, so I've gone ahead and bought that with the intention of making a small game.  It's going to be a 2-D platformer, that is to say it will play in 2-D but will be rendered in 3-D.  It's a real challenge to get your head around something that you've no idea about, but it's as interesting as starting out with Premiere Pro or 3DS max.

Speaking of Max, he's letting me create meshes for use in UE4, which is nice of him.

The 7-minute video from IBM took me about four or five hours from start to finish; I suspect this may take somewhat longer.  My tentative plan for the moment is to have ten levels, with a choice towards the end resulting in two entirely different endings, whatever they may be.  I think it'll take about 30-45 minutes for the player to complete.

Just as an insight into what this actually entails, it took me four hours to figure out how to use a heightmap to displace an image with Max, in order to gain some rocky looking scenery.  It currently looks like this:

And this is where I would put a screenshot of the tutorial hallway I made.

Except that it didn't save and I lost hours of work.

Whoops.

I think I overwrote the example level that's provided with the software, which will automatically refresh every time you start and therefore re-write the re-written save.  As it were.

I've still got all my assets so it's just a case of remaking it (hopefully better, with the knowledge I've gained in the process).

Still, total like, bummer dude!

More IBM Rugby Stuff!

I had to delete the videos of the game from youtube (don't ask) so here is an edited video I made that introduces some of the team!

It took a few hours to make, including an hour to find the swoosh/ding sound effects (time well spent, in my opinion) but I had a lot of fun making it (as I always do when making things like this) so it was worthwhile.

Enjoy!

IBM Rugby

So I've started playing for IBM.

They're in the first division (under the top league) in Japan, so they're fairly strong in the scheme of things.  Having said that, they only narrowly avoided relegation last year, so it'll be a struggle this year as well most likely.

We had a practice game against Yakult (of the yoghurt fame) this weekend, in which I played a measly 20 minutes.  Infer from the 20 minutes what you will...

Anyway; I scored a try and made three or four runs for a total of probably 40 or 50 metres.  I made one error in throwing a pass to no one after one such break, but my tackling was 100% (1 out of 1).  It is debatable whether I should have gone inside to cover an attack that they ended up scoring from, but in the end it would have been 4 on 1 anyway so there's not much that could have been done.

They won by a try or two - one of theirs was a charge down and one was a kick with an incredibly wicked bounce (the aforementioned decision).

Anyway, if you are interested in watching, here it is.

My 20 minutes:

The whole game:

Aaaaaaaaahligator?

So for the past few days I've been having nightmares that are completely bonkers.

I end up being chased by reptiles (once snakes, once crocodiles/alligators).  I always turn and fight, but I always lose and end up in bed, in a pool of sweat.  It's got to the point where I just lie on a towel and sleep under a towel instead of a duvet.  It's warm enough.

An interesting thing has started happening though - I've begun recognising when I'm being chased by sleep reptiles as opposed to real ones; in this way I can wake myself up when needs be, and then struggle fitfully to get back to sleep again.

All the nightmares aside, everything is pretty much boring here at the moment.