Quick Takes: Nobody Cares Edition

Wherein I write about things that are only of interest to me.

I had plans for several posts on diverse topics, but seeing as how none of the thoughts were congealing into structured, rounded, complete articles, I have decided to write partially formed, abrupt, unfinished tidbits on things none of you care about.

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OK, that last picture of Redemptrix was mean. Here's one of the ship in broad daylight, as an apology.

Redemptrix, as seen by a space-bug about to get gooshed all over the bow.

The Glory of the Church

I built a cathedral in Minecraft.

I named it St. John Notch, because it was built on land donated from the Notcherani family.

The cathedral measures 64 L x 48 W x 32 H (not including steps or crosses). I had to level a hill in order to build it.

(Some pun involving the word "Holmes")

This was originally going to be a quick take, but I realized it's not actually that quick.

There has been a recent spat of Sherlock Holmes, and of this, The Murloc is quite pleased. Seeing as how she is the proud owner of the complete Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes collection (digitally remastered, of course), and any Holmes is good Holmes for her.

The Detecting Murloc at 221B Baker Street, London, England, in this 2004 file photo.

A quick roundup of the recent Holmeses:

Black as Space

So I figured out why Jack Flint painted his ship black.

Full-size Redemptrix in Minecraft (because someone else built the Enterprise). Either that or a black bear attacking campers in a black tent at midnight.

It makes it really hard to see.

Especially in the rain.

This Redemptrix is made of wool. I hope this doesn't make it shrink.

At least, I think I built the Redemptrix. It could be some random and haphazard arrangement of blocks, for all I can make out at night.

The Prime Minister, the President, and the Pope

Fr. Sullivan once remarked in a homily that God gives to the world the people it needs with the talents they need when the world needs them most. As an example, he noted the founding fathers of this country. Never before or since that illustrious group of men has there been gathered in one time and in one place so many minds of such political genius.

A statistician may expect talent to be randomly distributed. Perhaps, due to social and economic factors, talents may be developed in groups, but generally speaking a more homogeneous distribution might be expected. If one looks at history, then clearly this is not the case. Talent is not random and great men don't occur by happenstance. They are placed in a time and place, and rise to the occasions demanded of them.

When the world was facing perhaps the greatest threat mankind had ever produced, the most evil regime, save perhaps Carthage or the Aztecs, three people appeared, as if by divine providence, to bring it to a close. In a time when the world could not foresee a peaceful resolution to the global crisis of communism, when the very real threat of global thermonuclear war seemed frighteningly close, three heroes emerged on the scene and, without firing a single shot, brought the Soviet Union crashing down.

They were from diverse backgrounds; the theory that their concentration of talent arises from a common education or socioeconomic background does not hold. One was the daugher of a grocer, who studied chemistry. One was an actor and broadcaster, who began his career in politics at about the same age most men retire. The third was an unknown Polish priest, who suffered through two occupations.

Together, these three did more than perhaps any other person or group of people to end the communist threat. And for that, the world owes them the highest gratitude.

Nearly two years ago, I commented on the passing of one era of history. Certainly today, another has passed, with the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was not a random occurrence, and her position in history was not by happenstance.

"Catwoman is in my kitchen washing dishes. This is weird."

That was my status update when The Murloc returned from Wondercon last Saturday.

So, while holy people were doing holy things during holy week like taking unholy toddlers to the triduum and such, the Murloc was running around getting her costume ready for Wondercon, in Anaheim, CA, March 29-31.

For this, she created a brand-new classic Catwoman outfit:

Let's Code - CPM2DoB Part 4: WHAM!

That, my friends, is the sound of running head-first into the solid brick wall of poor code structure.

I just wanted to let you know that yes, this project is still alive. As Easter loomed, I had a major project due at work that kept me from working on it much, and The Murloc also had a thing happening that required I look after the boys at home. All in all, not much time was to be had for coding.

But I did get it working and playable! (Barely.)

So back to the aforementioned skull-shattering, neck-breaking, spine-telescoping, head-on collision. I was probably about an hour away from a playable build of the game, just putting the finishing touches on the methods that handled pieces movement, damage, captures, transformation, and victory checks, when I discovered a fatal flaw in my code organization. It was caused mainly due to laziness and not thinking ahead, but resulted in a flaming crash.

(The specifics were that I was writing the piece transformation method, y'know to allow a pawn to turn into a queen. Unfortunately, the master list of the different piece types (or "masterPieces" as it's known in the code), was not visible in scope to the transformation algorithm. I could have patched it by awkwardly passing the list as a parameter through the several layers of function calls necessary to get it where it was needed, but that would have been an awkward kludge on what was already a very kludgy mess. The alternative was to move the master piece list to the class where it was needed. But that required one change, which required a restructuring over here, which meant these other methods wouldn't work and would need to be redesigned, which meant this part was now over-complicated and should be streamlined, etc., etc. All in all, what was looking to be an hour or so of coding turned into a week. On the plus side, the code was much better organized once I finished.)

So after struggling fuming, and fussing, I finally got a working build! You can move pieces! And capture! And it will even check for victory conditions! (Yay!)

Rememeber: victory is capture-based, not checkmate-based, since checkmate is impossible to determine for random damage and kings that can fight back after taking a few hits.

NYI: Auras.