A couple of days ago, my five-year-old said this:

Monday is Martin Luther King day. But he isn’t a real king, because there aren’t any queens or princesses.

…and to all, a Good Night!

A question arose at dinner tonight: when is there going to be a Speed Racer movie that uncovers the sordid past of Racer X as a Mexican wrestler?

Although I am not bearded myself, nevertheless I find that I intend to apply for membership in this new Catholic, um, movement. You can find out more about it by clicking on the picture.

I’ve been working on a computer game for the last month or so; it’s a programming game of sorts.  The goal is to maneuver Robbie the Robot through a variety of dangerous environments by writing short little programs.  It’s not ready for anyone but Tcl programmers to play with (i.e., I’ve not packaged it up as a downloadable application), but it’s already kind of cute.  Here’s a level from the game, showing the robot in mid-execution of a program.  He’s trying to get from the start point (the blue spot) to the finish (the green target).  Click on the image to see it full size.

Screen shot of Robbie the Robot Game

I should add that the screen shot shows it running in test mode; that’s why there’s an “Edit” button in the upper right.  You can create new rooms and edit existing ones using another simple language.

Did I say that this was aimed at my kids?

I swear, I don’t know what’s going on. Certain things with WordPress just aren’t working. I can post short test posts, but it’s choking on anything substantive.  I’ve upgraded to the latest version, and it hasn’t helped.  I don’t get it.

I’m reading The Briar King, by Gregory Keyes.  I’ve never read him before; it was a special offer for the Kindle ($0, trying to get you hooked) and so I picked it up.  It appears to be competent-enough swords and knights and monsters fantasy, but there’s one thing about it that’s driving me nuts: the names.

Picking good names in a fantasy is tough, I’ll admit, and few people have the patience (or skill) to do it Tolkien’s way.  Keyes’ way, at least in this book, is to take familiar words and tweak them just a little.  For example, we don’t get griffins, or gryphons, or what have you; we get “greffyns”.  There’s a fellow who’s clearly meant to be something like a highland Scot (in terms of social position, not language), a member of a clan, who’s name is Meq-something rather than Mac-something.  I noticed many similar examples yesterday, though I can’t bring to mind at the moment.

Now, if this book were set in a parallel universe, with almost the same history, I could buy this.  The language might have evolved slightly differently, and the choice of names could show how things are similar yet different.  But that’s not what’s going on here.  There’s clearly a link to our world, but it’s not a close link.  Mr. Meq-wossname isn’t a Scot in any meaningful way.

It seems sloppy, is all.

I agree with the Jester. This makes me very sad.