all about duncan
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[[all_about_duncan]] last edit on Jul 4, 2009 11:08 AM by marasmusine

BEER MAKES MY DOG SNEEZE!

Where else am I?


Why I am called "Marasmusine"

My first pseudonym, way back in.. uh... 1994? Or was it 1997? One or the other. Anyway, I went by the name 'Zucchini', as a sort of in-jokey reference to a dead computing magazine called Your Sinclair.
I few years ago I started a livejournal account and found that someone had already taken that name.
So I decided to pick a new name; something unique; something I could put into Google and be sure to find only references to me in a sort of mad ego-trip way.
Marasmusine was a drug-name I had devised for the Jhenge roleplay campaign - dunno why, but I picked that.
The root word is marasmus - picked randomly from the dictionary - a kind of atrophy (I guess at the time of the story I made it refer to a wasting of the spirit)
I like to draw pictures.

Places I Have Lived (In)

  • Somewhere in Bradford (until about 3 years old)
  • Cantley, Doncaster. Family home for about 18 years.
  • Boddington Hall, Leeds. First year uni. Boddington Hell. Confirmed my suspicion that people, generally, are crap in a bad way.
  • Woodhouse Lane, Leeds. Nice. Above the housing agency that rented it. 20 seconds from the university steps. Cultivated a thick layer of noodles and wax on the kitchen counter.
  • Autumn Avenue, Leeds. Pretty good. In a miserable studenty kind of way.
  • Intake, Doncaster. One of the worse places in England. Confined myself to boxy littly bedroom to avoid plebby housemates. Anally retentive landlord threw me out after 3 months.
  • Balmoral Road, Doncaster. Mums house, briefly. Gorgeous house, shame we couldn't keep it. Fell from ceiling once.
  • South Street, Doncaster. Slugs in kitchen. Windows smashed regularly. Psychotic neighbour. Got Burgled.
  • Carr House Road, Doncaster. Met Barney. Situated next to pizza shop. Nice while it lasted. Don't forget, you got burgled here too! -Derek
  • Sprotborough Road, Doncaster. Moved in with landlady's brother when she sold Carr House Rd. House. Fun to live there, but had to move on to...
  • Leadenham, Lincolnshire. Moved in with girlfriend (and now fiancee) Janine. Rent is a fortune. House falling apart. Moving out again at some point.
  • Great Central Avenue, Doncaster. Renting it from Janine's brother.

You just can't stop in one place can you? -Derek

Some Things I Have Programmed.

I've always enjoyed computer programming, even though I wouldn't consider myself good enough to do it professionally.
Here's some 'stuff' I've 'done' in the past:
The Sinclair Spectrum Era
These were all written in BASIC. Machine code was beyond me.
  • The Crystal Orb 2; A sequel to the game The Crystal Orb. Sort of a real-time Angband.
  • Alien 3; I was a big Aliens fan. Your little figure stood in a corridor, blasting oncoming aliens with grenade launcher, machine gun or flamethrower. Barely a game but there was something really satisfying about it.
  • Bwok; A strategy game I made pretty much by typing in random lines of code, just to see what would happen. You had to eliminate as many as your coloured blocks on the screen by shooting them down - the bullet originating from any of your blocks. A bullet striking a different coloured block is rotated by 90 degrees. The more rotations, the more points, so you would try to set up complicated routes for the bullet.
  • The Aliens Adventure Game; A text adventure game in which the hero tries to hunt or avoid an alien which moves around a big building. Game was wiped out once when my Mum turned on the kitchen lights underneath my bedroom.
  • Blipfighter; The word BLIP wavered down the screen. You had to shoot it with your letter A spacecraft, with ! bullets. Formed the basis of many ascii-based shoot-em-ups to come.
  • Colony; A management game; you controlled mines and terraformers on an Acheron-style planet. Contains the only known usage of the word 'bosonsynthesis'

The Amiga Era
Two languages used: AMOS and Blitz Basic.
  • Various unfinished adventure games; I wanted a more object-oriented text adventure game, like all those great MUDs I was playing at university. In one you could tell people to take their clothes off.
  • Alphabet City; Plain interconnected screens formed alphabet city, in which the letters A to Z lived, going about their business. The player was the letter A. I had some big plans for this game all to do with different factions and going on missions and stuff.
  • Rebelsun; An Ascii version of my fave speccy game Rebelstar. It had a level designer and a weapon designer, leading Derek to design a level involving Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer (and lucky beige carpets)
  • Blip Fighter II; Ascii-based shoot-em-up. In fact the only non-ascii graphic was the vertical line of your craft's beam weapon. Enemy destruction was percentage-based rather than hit-point based. Lots of different enemies, special levels, weapons and all kinds of fun. Demo mode was a 0-player game. Had a hidden mode which tried to brainwash you with various dissident messages.
  • Poetry; Amos program which cut and mixed up text files. Formed the basis for some JDB songs such as The Party.
  • Wordulator; Like Poetry, but with a GUI and everything.
  • The Crystal Orb 3; Breaking free of the 48K limit of the spectrum, whilst still using really crummy graphics. I could never get the hang of graphics.

The PC Era
Dark Basic was my main tool here; probably a really bad choice as I've never used the 3d graphics commands but the compiler always includes all the 3d libraries, making all my 2D and text games horrible bloatware.
  • Blipfighter3; The best ASCII-based shoot 'em up ever made. Possibly the only one.
  • Rebelsun 2; Another Rebelstar type game. The most 'proper' graphics I've done, although all still 2d and tile-based.
  • Chaos; I just couldn't think of a new name for my Chaos remake. It's Chaos, but different. It's vaguely based on 3rd edition D&D stats. STOP PRESS: I've decided to call it 'Chaos Wars'.
  • Bwok; An updated version of my old spectrum game. This one actually uses 3d graphics.
  • Blipfighter IV
  • Chaos Wars
  • Crystal Orb Adventures

>I haven't received any email.
>If I had, I would have known that Derek had PS2 he could give to me which he has repaired. It seems like a good deal despite not having any pads, after all if I'm getting a console for free the price of a pad is a small price to pay!
>If I had received such an email, by golly, I would've immediately responded with an excited affirmative!
>Considering all of the above, I might consider making it down to Doncaster on the 17th to attend the party (brief visit as it may be). That is, if I'm not working of course. I'd better check my rota.
>Unfortunately I appear to be working every weekend from now to eternity.
>With this being the case, maybe I can get Derek to visit Lincoln sometime soon. Maybe there's something good coming to the cinema that we can see.
>Or perhaps I'll have opportunity to come to Doncaster with Janine at some point, as I'd like to give Derek his keyboard back before we move house on the 31st of July.
>In either case, I seem to have plenty of time off next week; Thursday for example.
>Yes.. yes.. I think that's probably the best bet. I know for certain Derek is free all day on thursday. I might just do that.
>I've just realised that it's Thursday today. I hope that Derek didn't go into Lincoln and find me not there.
>Though considering the fact that Derek was expecting me to be journeying to Doncaster for some reason, it seems unlikely he would have gone to Lincoln.
So I suppose it's just as well I didn't go into Lincoln and wait around the train station there.

I finally got a Googlewhack (by accident) just now: Modtracker Triplet (but I guess it depends if you count Modtracker as a word)

does Modtracker show a definition available on google? If not that's not a googlewhack. Anyway I get two results for that. Did you use inverted commas? If so, again, not a googlewhack

No quotes; that tiwaneese entry wasn't there before.
Oh wait; try 'modtracker triplets' (plural); that must've been it.
There's no definition for ModTracker, so not a googlewhack. It's what you'd call a "proprietary googlewhack" or something.

Or a "whacklett"?

Words you wont find anywhere else
, but I have used them in the course of things.
  • Undisturbablisation. (Used in the comments for one of my Crystal Orb Adventures functions.)