BenPaddon.co.uk

Is anyone else playing that new map pack for Portal based on the 2D Flash version? Because I’m stuck here (click to embiggen)…

I’m fairly confident that this particular room is impossible. Impossible, I say.

I know, it’s not the best title. But I needed something vaguely footer-related.

Anyway.

A quick scroll to the bottom of the page will reveal absolutely no links to anything ever. This is because Vincent, in all his splendor, “fixed” it. Nifty or what? An interesting point is that the footer code for the skin contains this little message:

/* WARNING: This file is protected by copyright law. To reverse engineer or decode this file is strictly prohibited. */

Good thing we did neither, then. No, Vince’s solution was far more creative.

Edit: I forgot to implement Andrew’s Turing Test in the new skin, so people couldn’t leave comments. This has now been fixed.

The new skin is alive and kicking, save for some horrible links embedded into the footer of the site using some kind of voodoo magic. A co-worker and I will be ripping the crap out of ‘em tomorrow.

This evening my Dad, Stepmom and I drove over to Ikea (by way of a British pub in Burbank named the Buchanan Arms, which was quite nice despite the fish not quite meeting the standards set by the Robin Hood) where I bought myself a shelving unit for my ever-growing collection of DVDs, books and vidjagames. I was fast running out of space on my current shelving unit, which is more or less the size of a termite’s intestinal tract, so I decided I shell out the dosh on a fairly non-crap sized thing to put my shit on.

I could talk to you about how much of a pain in the arse it was to put the unit together (in short: surprisingly easy, although I had to move it out of my room and into the kitchen to slide the back on… hang on, that wasn’t quite as short as I was aiming for) but instead I’m going to talk to you about Bob Marley. “My,” I hear you say, “That’s quite a tangent even for you, Ben.” But stay with me, because it is loosely connected to our excursion to Ikea.

Whilst in Ikea looking at lighting (because the desk in the office isn’t quite as well-lit as it could be, and in the interest of not causing our retinas to dissolve into a fine paste we were on the look-out for some nice desk lamps) I spotted a guy with dreadlocks. I was ill and my brain wasn’t quite functioning properly and so mentally I made a rather childish observation - “Hey, that guy looks like Bob Marley.” I spent the rest of the walk through Ikea with “No Woman No Cry” stuck in my head, and rather oddly it was (I think) playing on the in-store PA system as I was going through the Check Out. So, not twelve minutes ago, I bought “Legend” on iTunes. I also looked up the guy on Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit) and discovered he died of Toe Cancer.

I’m not kidding. The guy had melanoma on the big toe on his right foot, and chose not to have the thing amputated because it was against his religious beliefs as a Rasta. The cancer spread throughout his body until it reached the terminal stage, and even then he refused to draw up a will because to do so would bely the Rastafari belief that death is not an inevitability*. I’d spent a long time believing that Bob Marley had been shot at a concert for being too much of a hippie or some such thing. But refusal to let someone lop his toe off? Seems a little silly to me. The guy could still be knocking out cracking tunes today if he was willing to part ways with the big spud on his right meatslab.

Oh well. Not much that can be done about it now, is there?

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*a belief no doubt concocted to ease the process of tax evasion. Actually that was a joke.

Here is a list of computer and videogames that I will be passing on as May rolls onwards:

1. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

I seldom talk about general religion on my blog. It’s usually an annual occurrence, and I don’t usually have anything insightful to offer. It’s usually “I’m not a religious person, but I’m open-minded.” That’s a stark change from the opinion I held five years ago, which was “There is no God, and if you believe in God you’re a complete and utter idiot.” It’s a stance which has softened somewhat over the past few years, but it has effectively remained the same - I don’t think there’s a God. The difference is that now I’m open to the possibility.

I had a small spiritual crisis back in ‘06 in part because spent a lot of time thinking about how, when I die, I probably won’t go anywhere. The thought of evaporating into nothingness scared me. It still does. I try not to think about it much because the last time I tried to imagine what ceasing to exist would feel like I was so utterly terrified I actually cried, and I found it more than a little difficult to get to sleep that night. Experiencing that make it very easy for me to see why people choose to believe in some form of mystical energy force that controls their destiny.

On the balance, I’m generally rather accepting of people’s faith provided they don’t try to push their faith onto others, or use their beliefs to justify the willful harm others, or try to use elements of their faith as an excuse for inactivity. I also take exception to religious leaders - and religious people generally - who make silly statements about how Atheists are an inherently evil people with no moral scruples simply because they haven’t any religious textbook to give them instructions for living and a basis for what is right and wrong. Frankly, That’s bollocks of the highest caliber, and it’s for this reason that I don’t give to explicitly religiously motivated charities - I can’t see past their faith, and I can’t help but feel that the only reason they’re doing whatever it is their charity does is because they’re trying to curry favour with their magical space wizard of choice. That’s probably a little narrow-minded of me considering that they’re helping people regardless of motivation, but it does seem more than a tad disingenuous to me. It’s a little on the slimy side, to be honest.

I recently finished watching An Evening with Kevin Smith (which I recommend to absolutely everyone ever, along with the second one) and he mentions how he was effectively roped into filming a documentary for The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince which was jointly about the release of his then-new album, and the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. At one point The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist asks those with faith to step to one side of the room, and those without to the other, and then tells the Atheists that because they have no faith they have no moral code and are therefore inferior people. Those with faith have a guidebook (the Bible, natch) and are, it seems, utterly incapable of performing evil deeds.  Further evidence, as if it were needed, that The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince is no more mentally sound that the Pope (who is also stark raving bonkers).

I find it a little funny that those who harbour a Carrie’s Mother level of religious conviction are so vehemently against criticism of their faith of choice and yet they have no qualms utterly bashing Atheism. But then we’re talking about people for whom Hypocrisy is a way of life - people who say that God teaches love and then go on to say that he “hates fags” and wants to see them all killed… which isn’t actually inconsistent when you consider that in the Bible God kills a good couple of million people compared to the number of people Satan killed - ten. If they ever get around to making Bible: The Movie God will have to be played by Vin Diesel, Jet Li or Chuck Norris.

My laptop hates me.

Every few days, for no real reason whatsoever, it decides it no longer wants any part of the wireless network at work. It detects the network but decides that it doesn’t want to be able to use the internet. This is a decision the laptop is making on its own and it’s something that the laptop is doing, not the network. Rolling the laptop back to a system config from a few days ago usually fixes the problem, but it stops working again about four or five days later.

The laptop is using Windows Vista Home Premium, I have McAfee SecurityCenter installed, and those are really the only programs which could be causing the problem. If anyone has any insights, I’d love to hear ‘em.

This blog post contains some spoilers for the second issue of Jump Leads, so if you haven’t read it yet I’d suggest not reading on. There are also potential spoilers for parts of the third season of Doctor Who so if you’re not up to speed with that show - no actual text, but some links to episode descriptions. If you don’t want those spoilt for you I’d advise against clicking those particular links - you’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em.

Read the rest of this entry »

5155-3281-6701. Drop me a message if you’re adding me.

Below is a picture of actual text on an actual church sign that I actually drive past on my actual way home from the place where I actually work. Click to embiggen.

Have you ever seen a more self-contradictory sign in your life?

Euan and I have been secretly planning a collaborative blog called Skyscraper for the last couple of months, and the site is finally live although there’s no content on it yet. Eventually we’ll be using it as a sort-of central hub for all of our writing (except my Ficlets, natch) but for now it consists of a single post, a single comment, and an unfinished “About” page.

I want to do another webcomic.

I’m obviously not abandoning Jump Leads, so don’t worry about that. I’m constantly writing scripts, constantly coming up with ideas, and that story is far from over. No, I’m very much feeling the need to work on a more traditional three- or four-panel “slice o’ life” comic. Something a little more close-to-home. Something semi-autobiographical.

And I want to draw it myself.

Yes, I know, I hate everything I draw. But I want to get past that. I want to break that barrier and try to get myself to a state where I am once again happy with my cartooning. I have no understanding of anatomy, no real grasp of technique, my style is wobbly and any hands I draw look like shit, but I want to give it a go again. Two years ago I decided I was too frustrated with my art to continue working on Fried, and I decided I wasn’t good enough to do Jump Leads. But I want to break that cycle. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to bring Jump Leads to life (and just as well really, as JjAR is doing a much better job of that than I ever could) but I reckon I could get myself to a place where I can say, “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Hopefully I’ll have something more concrete for you in the near future.