Granny’s Knitting

 Posted by James Paige on April 29th, 2008
I wrote this last year as a slashdot comment in response to this story. Having just re-discovered it, and realizing I had not posted it anywhere else, I thought I should reproduce it here:

BAM! The door splintered off its hinges, and toppled into the room. The cats yowled and scrambled under the furniture. Six police officers with plexiglass masks and riot guns stormed into the room and surrounded Granny’s overstuffed floral-patterned armchair.

“Oh, my!” said Granny.

“Drop the knitting!” shouted one of the officers. “And keep your hands were we can see them!” he added.

Granny released the needles, and the scarf fell into her lap with the yarn. The officer who had spoken reached out with the barrel of his gun and nudged the knitting from her lap onto the floor.

“Clear!” shouted another officer.

A young plainclothes officer carrying a digital clipboard entered the room, gingerly stepping over the wreck of the door. He gave the heap of knitting a scowl, and stopped in front of Granny. The riot police shifted aside to give him a clear view of her.

“Abigail Theresa Winslow?” the officer read from his clipboard.

Granny removed her reading glasses and looked up at the man. “Yes, that’s my name.” she said.

“You are hereby charged with Economic Terrorism in the 2nd Degree. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say is being recorded, and can be used against you in a court of law.”

“I don’t understand!” wailed Granny, wringing her hands.

The officer ducked down and picked up Granny’s knitting. He held it up to the light, lifting it with only his thumb and forefinger, as if he did not like to touch it.

“This is a beautiful scarf, Mrs. Winslow.” he said.

“Oh, thank you, but–” Granny began confusedly.

“I can tell you spent a lot of time on it.” said the officer.

“Well, yes, I–”

“We have witnesses willing to attest that you sell these scarves for no more than the cost of the yarn…”

“Yes, I just enjoy making–”

“…Severely undercutting the prices of your commercial competitors by an order of magnitude, in spite of the fact that your scarves are obviously superior handcrafted products.”

“I… I… well, … Thank you?” said Granny, still confused, but recognizing the compliment to her handiwork.

“Don’t get funny with me, Lady!” the officer snapped, leaning in close to Granny’s face. “You should be ashamed of yourself! This sort of underpricing makes me sick! I’ve come to expect this kind of altruistic bull from hackers and teachers, but I never expected it from a respectable citizen with no criminal record. What is this world coming to?”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Granny.

“Take her away, boys.” said the officer.

Two of the riot police gently handcuffed Granny, and lead her out of the room.

“Send in forensics to bag the evidence.” said the officer, dropping the knitting, and wiping his thumb and forefinger on his shirt. He looked around the room, and shook his head sadly. “When will people learn? She acted like she didn’t even know it was wrong.”

Provide Excellent Customer Service through SMASHING!

 Posted by James Paige on April 6th, 2008

Pyweek just ended, and my team *barely* got our entry submitted in time. At 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds, I was literally shouting “Where is the upload button!? Why can’t I find the upload button!? It was here yesterday!”

You can download my team’s game here. I would also recommend checking out the numerous other nifty entries (although most of them are distributed as source code so you may have to install Python and some libraries)

(Old) Bob the Hamster Sidescroller

 Posted by James Paige on February 12th, 2008


I recently ported some of my ancient QuickBasic code to FreeBasic. One such piece of code was an old unfinished prototype of a Bob the Hamster jump-and-run side scrolling game.

You can download the results here ↵
bob-old-sidescroller.zip

You can move Bob around a single level, and interact with a few objects, although there are no enemies to fight.

This code is notable in O.H.R.RPG.C.E history because, as best as I can remember, it is the first Hamster Republic code to use the multi-directional scrolling code used for the OHRRPGCE’s maps.

I have no plans to finish this code, but I do have another sidescroller in the works

Raku is made of burning!

 Posted by James Paige on December 11th, 2007


Raku is made of burning. It is sort of like love, except that it is done with ceramics and a lot of flammable natural gas. Raku glows red hot, and you drop it in a bucket full of newspaper and let it burn, and when you take it out it is beautiful.

Music Reviews and Time Portals

 Posted by James Paige on September 27th, 2007

Current mood: time-warped

The review I posted yesterday of Sex Club Reject’s new album was criticized by some as being too full of hyperbole. To those naysayers, I would refer this article I just read hot of the AP:

Thursday, Sept 27. Researchers in Italy published a new paper suggesting that the Renaissance, a historical period of cultural and artistic advances which brought Europe out of the Dark Ages, may have in fact been triggered when a five second clip of a Sex Club Reject song accidentally fell backwards through a rift in time from Hesperia California in 2018 back to the city of Florence in the late 13th century.

In related news, other research from the same team suggests that the Permian–Triassic extinction event may have in fact been triggered when a 13 second clip from a Sadjelko track fell back through a time rift from New York 2006 to somewhere in the middle of Pangaea 251,400,000 BC

GXP12L-Q-R5 Hyper Mega Ultra World-Destroyer Cannon

 Posted by James Paige on September 26th, 2007

Current mood: Filled with musical notes

For the past week I have been enjoying the new Sex Club Reject album. My friend Josh is the mastermind behind SCR, and he asked me to do the spoken-word vocals on track 07 “Pow Boom No!” It strikes me as fascinating that so many of my favorite musicians are actually people I actually know, and even count as friends. For the past few decades, the world of music has been about big stars, and I see that big-star-world crumbling. The big stars can’t realistically compete with the myrmidon tiny stars anymore. Not for my ear anyway.

Sex Club Reject

SCR’s music covers a wide range of styles. It exhibits more versatility than what I see out of most other bands, as it touches upon rock, and metal, and emo, and dance, and techno, and love-ballads, and desert-rock, and beatles-esque rock and punk and industrial and many points in-between, while managing to be good on all fronts, and getting steadily better every time I hear more of it. I am obviously not an impartial source here since I have known the band’s lead since we were both in grade-school, and my voice is featured on the new album, but still, with all the impartiality I can muster, I insist that this album is several different kinds of awesome, and if Josh’s music keeps steadily increasing in awesomeness at the same rate that it has increased over the past ten years, then by 2012 he will reach a level of widespread acclaim that is the post-RIAA-apocalypse year-2012-equivalent of superstardom*, and by 2017, Sex Club Reject music will cure blindness, eradicate cancer, and cause military dictatorships to crumble.

Anyway, thanks to the magic of the interwub, you don’t need to take my only-mildly-hyperbolic word for it, you can simply listen for yourself.

*After the ashes of the RIAA-Apocalypse settle, I expect that the leather-clad spike-covered vigilantes and mutants who survive will enjoy a landscape of music appreciation similar to the one described by John Titor where the lines between making music and listening to it are blurred. Where even the greatest talents in the world still have to work a day job, yet even the modest beginners get a chance to jam along with everyone else, and music merges with daily life in an integral way that will almost become spiritual… So basically kinda like Jazz, except for *all* music.

Who Shot Bob the Hamster?

 Posted by James Paige on July 2nd, 2007

Current mood: coma-ey

I was too distraught to post about this earlier, but yes, it is true, somebody has shot Bob the Hamster!

He’s in the hospital right now, in a coma. The details of the attempted assassination are still unclear. Because the Hamster Republic has no standing police force, we are asking the public for help in investigating the crime. You can find details here. Apparently the shooter was arrogant enough to leave a string of cryptic clues to his identity.

Math puzzle for today

 Posted by James Paige on June 13th, 2007

Current mood: Mathy

I have often heard it said by computer security type people that using real words in a password is a terrible idea, and that all passwords should be made of random letters numbers and punctuation.

So here is your math puzzle for the day. Estimate which is of the following is a better password:

(1) 8 random characters that may include lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers and any punctuation found on a generic keyboard.

example: (mR{Yu_g
(2) 3 random words from the english language. They have to actually be random, and not just three words that you picked from your imagination.

example: dotard mane skycap
Be sure to show your work.

Brief Blog-Urge (and art pictures!)

 Posted by James Paige on May 30th, 2007

Current mood: blog-urged

I am still alive. The blog-urge has not left me, it is just hard to find time to draw anymore, and I hate posting a blog without a drawing.

Here is a sculpture I am working on:

And here is something Genevieve painted recently (which I think is beautiful!):

Pixel Angel (pixelation)

 Posted by James Paige on March 24th, 2007

Current mood: pixelated

I drew this inside the OHRRPGCE’s built-in sprite editor. I drew it for the Castle Paradox Miss Pixel 2007 contest, but I was just a few hours too late for the ending deadline :(

A few more pictures at gilgamesh