Thought Shower

I'm killing time before I head down to London tomorrow morning and I'm in a mood that can only be described as super-bored and frisky, so I thought I'd write about an idea that's been gestating in my head for a few months now. Firstly a quick history lesson. Alan Turing was a British mathematician and computer scientist who is famous for his pioneering work with computers, not to mention his ground breaking work during the second world war at Bletchley Park in the field of code-breaking. This is the man who broke the Enigma code, so you know he was a smart guy. He was also a practicing homosexual in an era when it was criminalized for which he was eventually prosecuted, but that's by the by. Turing was fascinated by the idea of AI ( artificial intelligence) and he postulated that if a human could converse normally with a computer, without ever realising that it was not a human they were conversing with, then that computer would have reached a state of true artifi...

Just got back from watching Lars von Trier's latest, 'Antichrist', and I thought I'd put my thoughts down while they were still fresh in my head. If there is one word to describe this movie it is 'provocative'. Von Trier pretty much proved this at Cannes by claiming to be the world's greatest filmmaker. He wants to rile you up. He wants you to walk out and ask for your money back. He would love it if you wrote into your local newspaper and complained about 'this sick filth'. He wants all these things because it means he has affected you, be it positively or negatively, he has caused you to react to what is essentially a fancy light show. And that is the essence of film as art. Von Trier uses the tropes that you know from the horror world to created a study of grief, guilt, depression, and madness, and manages to wrap it in a fairly engaging plot regarding the two character's interactions and relationship. There has been a great deal of controvers...

...Quick Capsule Review. - Better than the first one. - Still completely over-the-top ridiculous. - Still like National Treasure more.

Ever think telling the time is just a little bit too easy? Why not throw in some maths to make it a mini test every time you check the clock? Here's a small Java program I wrote that displays the time using binary digits. It'll be second (get it?)  nature in no time! import java.util.*; /**  *  * @author D. Duncombe  */ public class Main {               /** Creates a new instance of Main */   public Main() {   }       /**   * @param args the command line arguments   */   public static void main(String[] args) {       System.out.println("*************************");   System.out.println("*** Binary Clock V1.0 ***");   System.out.println("***    D. Duncombe    ***");   System.out.println("*************************");       while (1 == 1)   {       Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();   int secondValue1 = cal.get(cal.SECOND);   int secondValue2 = secondValue1;      ...

I was thinking today about how government sponsored advertising on t.v. is able to get away with so much more than the regular adverts from normal companies. For example take the drink driving adverts you see at Christmas that are full of violence, or the anti-drug adverts with disturbing imagery. 'So', I thought, 'how could a company use similarly over the top techniques to sell their product?' This is what I came up with: We open on a pub car park. Twilight. A car pulls in and parks. A young man, maybe late teens or early twenties steps out. We follow the man as he walks into the pub, pausing briefly to hold up his car key and click the remote lock button. We see the car's lights flash once. Cut to; the young man is sitting at a table in the pub twiddling with his phone, a pint of beer sits half empty on the table in front of him. Suddenly three more men appear and his face lights up when he notices their arrival. Cut to; montage of the four friends laughing, roug...

Dear Microsoft, Simply follow this advice and I guarantee you at least one game sale. To me. Release Chu Chu Rocket on Xbox live Arcade. I would snap that up so fast it would make your eyes bleed. Here's what you do. Spruce it up with brain melting HD graphics. Keep the game-play identical to the original. Include all the original maps and game modes, while throwing in new maps and the ability for users to share their custom maps online. You could even have an option to have those silly little xbox avatars running around instead of cats and mice if you want. Of course online play would now be blazingly fast so you could even up the number of simultanious players to make it even more hectic than in the good old Dreamcast days. Think about it guys and get back to me. Oh, and don't tell me there are rights issues or whatever 'cos I can see Sega games on there right now. Cheers.

After over 1 year of dieting and exercising vigorously, I thought I would provide an update as to the state of my Body Mass Index The three 'Target' lines represent the upper limit, lower limit and middle of the 'healthy' BMI scale. It should be noted that my BMI will most likely not get any lower from this point (it may in fact go up) because I may continue to lose fat while gaining muscle which throws off the BMI measurements. But I have a seperate graph for Body Fat Percentage ;)

WHAT STUDIES SAY ABOUT YOUR SOUNDS: POP: Conformists, overly responsible, role-conscious, struggling with sexuality or peer acceptance. HEAVY METAL: Higher levels of suicidal ideation, depression, drug use, self-harm, shoplifting, vandalism, unprotected sex. DANCE: Higher levels of drug use regardless of socio-economic background. JAZZ/RHYTHM & BLUES: Introverted misfits, loners. RAP: Higher levels of theft, violence, anger, street gang membership, drug use and misogyny. *Phew* It's a good thing I listen to electro-funk, no negative connotations there. (source: http://www.theage.com.au/national/musical-key-to-unlocking-teenage-wasteland-20080804-3pxy.html?page=-1)

First I'm going to define what I mean by using the word 'geek' as the word has many different meanings to different people. I'm using it to mean a person with a fanatical devotion to something that is essentially irrelevant to their life but they derive pleasure from, for example If you were a doctor and were fanatical about doctoring that doesn't count as it's your job and you get paid. Now you have to ask yourself why certain things are socially acceptable to be geeky about whereas other things are not. Let me demonstrate with an easy example: Say I spend my weekends at science fiction conventions dressed up as my favourite character from the Star Wars saga (an Ewok, naturally) with 200 other guys dressed up in a similar manner, that would make me a horrendous social outcast with no friends, no one would talk to me etc etc. HOWEVER, If I was to spend my weekends in the pub dressed in the shirt of my favourite football team watching a match with 200 other guys ...

( http://www.davezilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/virginity-by-major.png ) This is BRILLIANT. Computer Science is kicking some major ass.

My review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal masterpiece The Holy Mountain (I just need to re-watch it with commentary to get an idea of what the hell he was on about) My review of Zinda, also known as the Indian Oldboy ripoff. And possibly a review of the Indian Resavoir Dogs from the same director. My review of Sukiyaki Western Django, Takeshi Miike's new eastern. (that's a western set in the east)

I'm continuing my adventure into the vast back catalogue of video games I missed first time around with Half-Life 2 (2004). I bought the Orange Box late last year on PC and played through Portal. Frankly I was blown sideways by the unbridled genius of it. An almost flawless game in my opinion. So, after completing that game, I moved on to Half-Life 2 which I missed in '04 when it was first released. I hit the first loading point. The game crashes. I restart. I hit the next loading point. The game crashes AGAIN. I quickly give up. Fast forward 7 months to this week and I've bought Orange Box for the Xbox 360. This time Half Life 2 doesn't crash. I just finished the game today so I thought I'd write down a few of my thoughts about what is considered by many to be one of the greatest games of all time. My first complaint is a major one. About halfway through the game I encountered a major glitch that meant I couldn't proceed at all. Basically a door that was suppos...

Hey guys, just thought I'd throw up my review for the recent documentary Sharkwater as it is yet to be posted on alternativereel.com check it out. Title: Sharkwater Year Released: 2006 MPAA Rating: PG Director: Rob Stewart Starring: Rob Stewart, Patrick Moore, Erich Ritter. Movie Clip Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggtxA4wuXzY Quote: “The truth will surface.” Review: The documentary Sharkwater started life as a fairly standard nature documentary from underwater wildlife photographer Rob Stewart, with the theme that sharks are not the dangerous man-eating monsters they are portrayed to be in films like Jaws and in the mass media, instead they are intelligent inquisitive creatures who are perfectly evolved to be the top predator of the oceans. However, while filming, the crew came across a ship illegally fishing with a ‘long line’ (a line many miles long with baited hooks along its length) a method of fishing that is extremely wasteful and dangerous to all marine life. This dis...

If you guys thought I'd be wasting my post exam freliss (that's freedom-bliss) playing Grand Theft Auto IV (haha, I.V. like the drip, get it?) you'd be wrong! Instead I'm partying like it's 1999 with one of the greatest games ever made: Roller Coaster Tycoon. And you know what I've realised? Like a fine wine, this game is getting better with age. You guys may be cool, but are you 'Park Rating: 999' cool? Suck on it tycoon-wannabes.

As revision for my Prolog class test on Friday I wrote a small program that works as a (very) simple calculator. %A simple calculator %By D. Duncombe add([],0). add([H|Tail],Total) :- add(Tail,Total2), Total is Total2 + H. mult([],1). mult([H|Tail],Total) :- mult(Tail,Total2), Total is Total2 * H. It allows you to add or multiply lists of numbers, the lists can be any size and the numbers can be any size (exceeding the Windows' Calculator that limits you to 32 digits, naughty naughty). So if you need to multiply 17 numbers of over 100 digits, I'm your man.

It's 3:44am. You know what that means? Yes, it's another barely coherant blog post from your truely. *cheers* Alright, settle down. A few days ago I was sitting in my A.I. lecture and Sirob Venok* (the only russian computer scientist in the world) was talking about search engines. Specifically he was talking about how it is impossible to negate things in engines such as Google. (You can't search for 'all pages without any "e"s in them; for example.) And as an example he said 'You cannot search for all animals that use radar except for Dolphins and Bats' (actually he said 'RAD-dar' but that's beside the point). I disagree Mr. Venok, I disagree with every fibre of my being! Let me just fire up the old Google Box... Right, well, for starters no animals use radar (except humans of course) so I'm guessing he meant echo-location. He also mentioned Barn Owls, so we'll rule them out. Let the searching begin! 'echo location in animals...

Back in the day I posted this picture on my Myspace profile. It is, of course, a reference to Futurama. However, this is what my friend Jason had to say about it: 'Dom was performing a spoken word epic in Florence, Italy, at the annual international spoken word grammies there, and during his freestyle section he brought up pizza, and one thing you should never do, is say that margharita is one of the best, it does not go down well with the Italians, he even called it "cheese and tomato." So anyway, Dom was rained on by a torrent of bottles... luckily he threw them all back. He killed 20,000 people.' Genius.

I've just passed the 4 week mark of my self-prescribed scheme of diet and exercise. The diet consists of not eating so much and the exercise consists of going to the gym a bit. Amazingly I've passed the halfway point to a BMI of 25. (a healthy weight according to the archaic scale) All I know is ive gone down one belt hole, and it feels good. :)

Hello children, I'm going to tell you a story today, Many moons ago I created a blog for my random thoughts and ideas known as the Thought Shower unfortunately it soon fell into disrepair, so as is the tradition in hollywood a the moment I am giving it (not a remake) a restart. You can see all the posts at http://www.thought-shower.blogspot.com and they are also automatically imported into my facebook notes, how cool is that? I've left a couple of posts from back in '06 so you can have a little look at them if you like if not, I'll see you on the flip side. Peace out homies.

Back in 1996 when the N64 came out, all the gaming magazine covers featured one thing: Super Mario 64. Many of them had slogans such as 'Revolutionary' and 'Greatest game ever' and for once the hyperbole was, in fact, spot on. The game was unlike anything seen before it, the beautiful 3D worlds, the fluid animation, the bizarre but intuitive control scheme, all adding up to the legend that is Super Mario 64. Mario 64 had not only jump-started 3D console gaming, but it had knocked it out of the park on the first try! The game was challenging and addictive, gorgeous to look at and wonderful to play, easy to pick up and play but took forever to master. In short, it ticked all the boxes and ended up the greatest gaming experience up to that point. So has it been surpassed in the 10+ years since it's creation? Not even close my friends. As games slip further and further away from the philosophy of action and fun, and more towards 'storyline' and working your ass ...