Forms, Forms, Forms

For those still not in the know, I'm winging off to Australia in late February to complete my university education. And you know what that means?

FORMS.

Course applications. Housing applications. Tuition grant deferment applications. Visa applications. Application applications. Address, full name, various telephone numbers ten times over. The fields I'm never sure how to answer. The fields I can't answer because I lack the necessary information. And I'm supposed to believe that some day, somehow, all these forms will be complete?

That's a lot of faith there.

I wish I had the ability to fast-forward past these weeks of anxiety to the point of time when everything will be nicely wrapped up. Then again, if I were cheating I might as well fast-forward to when I'm dead. There isn't much point to life if you don't live it.

Anyway! School restarted yesterday, with the same class as last semester. I was hoping we'd finally get a classroom with windows facing outside... no such luck. The only advantage, as far as I can see, is that we have a clear view of the lift lobby, and can keep tabs on everyone arriving at our floor.

Speaking of lifts, the lift logic in this block is worse than ever. I'm on the sixth floor, and all lifts already at the seventh or fifth floors refuse to respond. It's always the first-floor lifts which take the call. Always.

Stupid lifts.

But our classroom is otherwise quite nice - it's a new room, opened up only this semester for our use. Thus the carpet is pristine, the walls are pure white and the chair cushions are springy. Also, they lack curry stains. And... other stains. Um, right.

The best news, though, has to be that the last experiment for my Final Year Project is scheduled for tomorrow. Once that's done there'll be one whole ton of stress off my shoulders. Ahh, freedom. I can almost taste it.

...Enough of that. For now, a roundup of some of the more interesting recent webcomic updates:

• In Something Positive, Davan once again proves he's the master of the witty comeback.
• Sluggy Freelance gets out of draggy mode with a plot twist. (Phase 2? Perhaps!) Also, Riff's shoulder angels continue to amuse, even while highlighting that a notion of right or wrong depends on perspective.
• Exterminatus Now is, for the first time, serious.
  And it's still funny.
• The latest Lil Formers strip makes me wonder what sort of person would want to lick a robot in the first place. Do they even have a flavour?
• In No Need for Bushido, Yori shows that he can be competent, not just by hurting Ryoku but also by successfully applying Cho's advice. Good on him!

And finally, a random fact of the day: I dislike bananas, but love banana cake.

Till next time.

Bang and Bounce

On the subject of time-wasting, IndestructoTank! is one of the more unusual of such games out there. The premise is simple: you, the player, control an indestructable tank. Your aim is to destroy as many enemies as possible by ramming into them and gain experience points; you must obtain a certain amount of experience points before your steadily-decreasing fuel runs out. Fail, and the tank blows up. (Not so indestructable after all.) There are five enemies encountered in the game, all with varying point values, weapons and movement speeds.

The game has several unique features. One is the controls; the player can only move the tank left or right, using either keyboard arrow keys or a Wiimote. In order to launch the tank upwards, the tank must run into either an enemy missile or the enemy itself, creating a blast which propels the tank into the air. It is possible to perpetually keep the tank in the air, "juggling" from enemy to enemy, though points are obtained only if the tank lands on the ground.

Another feature is the "store" concept, where players can spend points accumulated during the game. The difference here is instead of purchasing weapons or upgrades, the points are used to buy enemies. That's right - you spend points to ensure that the next level will have more enemies for you to blow up in new and interesting combinations. (As a matter of fact, winning the game requires buying out the maximum possible frequency of all five enemies.) The strategy element comes from deciding what enemies to increase in number. The standard slow-firing Bomber? The aptly-named Bouncer with the rebounding missiles? Or perhaps the Miner, which can only travel on the ground? All enemy types have their own advantages and annoyances, and picking the right mix of enemies is necessary in order to clear each successive level.

Special features aside, even the more conventional aspects of the game do not disappoint. The graphics, while not overwhelmingly eye-catching, are actually fairly complex, and allow various enemies and missiles to be distinguised from each other at a glance. The mountainous backdrop is sufficiently varied, using fluctuating mountain heights and cloud patterns to avoid monotony. There is only one music track for all the levels, but it is suitably low-key and does not detract from the action.

Something I've noticed with many independantly-created timewasters is that they have great graphics, a great premise, superb graphics... and terrible game physics. IndestructoTank! suffers from no such problems. The movements of the tank are fluid, responding easily to the controls, and act in a reasonably realistic manner. Even slight control manipulations can make a big difference, allowing for precise actions in-game.

One of the few drawbacks of the game is that every time it is loaded afresh, the player must go through a forced tutorial. While commendable in getting new players to understand what they are playing before they try it out, it gets annoying for repeat players.

Also, the high scores lists don't work anymore thanks to some hackers, curse them.

Nevertheless, this is a great timewaster, perfect for those moments when you have lots of work to do and don't want to get on it just then. Simple, addictive and with just a little thinking required - one of the best games of its genre.

Time Wastage

So it occurs to me that I'm spectacularly good at wasting time - or whiling it away, as the occasion calls for it.

Take the last few days. I've been coming in at seven-thirty in the morning to do labwork and finishing up at around two in the afternoon. (The actual duration of course varies with the nature of the work, the available manpower and the number of mistakes made by said manpower.) My ride home is at five in the afternoon. For anyone with a rudimentary grasp of arithmetic or calculator usage, that means three hours of spare time in school and away from chocolate supplies, art materials and other home conveniences.

What is to be done then, with this spare time? These are the possible options:

1) Finish up daily lab reports.
2) Go to the library and read a book.
3) Pig out at one of the canteens.
4) Do stuff on the internet.

The first takes an hour on the outside, leaving two more as spares. The second is a poor option because I make it a point to avoid non-fiction books as much as possible (they trigger flashbacks of the last few weeks before the O' Levels) and I haven't been able to find the fiction section in our school library. The third is a ridiculous exercise in wasting health and money. Therefore the last is usually what I resort to.

And considering that I can eat up two hours effortlessly simply by surfing the internet, I think we may have a serious problem.

It's not that there's actually that much to see. Although the internet is a very large place, hardly 0.01% of it is likely to fall into my range of interests at all, and when we factor in the fact that I actually have to be aware of a site of interest in order to visit it, the number of websites available for two hours of browsing drops significantly. Adjust for sites which are rarely updated, sites which I've decided to boycott and moods wherein I simply don't feel like visiting a certain page, and the number drops further.

The internet does, however, provide numerous ways of amplifying the time spent on a single site. Wikipedia, for instance, has a link at every other word, and so a single keyword could lead to twenty pages browsed in a single sitting. Archives are another trap - be it comic archives or Something Awful's index of Photoshop Phriday topics, they provide a library of multiple instances of certain media the internet user might enjoy, even if these archives have been perused multiple times. And of course mindless online games are a well-known draw into repeating one set of actions over and over again for an imaginary reward.

But perhaps the most insidious of time-wasting sites are those which require input from the user, particularly thoughtful input, because as we all know thinking takes time when carried out properly and sometimes even when it's not. Blogs are a prime example of this, and...

...Dammit.

Pavarotti Dies at 71

CNN.com link

Sleep well, Senor Pavarotti. We will never forget you.