MINERVA: Episodic, Single-Player Half-Life 2

Welcome to the nano-blogging revolution -

I found Twitter's message length restrictions too much of a constraint, so I began re-implementing its systems from scratch. At just fourteen characters per twit, this is a whole order of magnitude better than yesterday's lesser micro-blogging platforms.

Get ready for Twit - a bright new dawn in the world of the interwebs!

It may surprise you that beer was involved in the conception, design and implementation phases of this wondrous project.

Edit 2009-09-06: Yes, I got distracted from adding new features to Twit. Have some other programmerations to play with instead...

Article Comments (now closed)

SkUrRiEr's gravatar

1. OMG

Posted by SkUrRiEr at 9:02AM, Tuesday August 25 2009

I should be ashamed that I laughed so hard at this.

I really should.

Brilliant, truly brilliant.

Thanks beer, theer!

(P.S. the name tag is brilliant)

(Extra padding to get over both twit's 14 char limit and twitter's 140 char limit: LOL LOL LOL LOL OMGWTFBBQ pointless padding is pointless; I drink, therefore I whine)

Naurgul's gravatar

2. abitbit late

Posted by Naurgul at 11:12AM, Tuesday August 25 2009

Actually, there's already a twitter-parody-site where you only post bits: one at a time. http://abitbit.com/

Sortie's gravatar

3. Let us in!

Posted by Sortie at 2:30PM, Tuesday August 25 2009

By pure accident, there already exists an account system used by the public on this very website - how about merging that account system with Twit, so us mortal people also can have part in the fun. I promise to post interesting stuff like "ffmpeg ingame!"

Cargo Cult's gravatar

4. Already up to three users

Posted by Cargo Cult at 7:14PM, Tuesday August 25 2009

Sortie: the login system's similar, but separate. I've copied your user details into the relevant database table doodah whatsit - login as 'Sortie', with whatever password you're using for the blog-beast.

Future features included following twits, responding to twits, and deleting twits. THE REVOLUTION BEGINS!

Sortie's gravatar

5. Re: Already up to three users

Posted by Sortie at 8:22PM, Tuesday August 25 2009

The nano-blogging revolution has begun!

Although a link from the mega-blogging paradigm to this new bright future for litterature would be nice. Perhaps just a simple "Twit" at the bottom of the page?

Sortie's gravatar

6. Re: Re: Already up to three users

Posted by Sortie at 8:30PM, Tuesday August 25 2009

On and in an attempt to spam your site as much as possible, it would be nice to have a global RSS feed fot twit while it's small, it'd be nice to see if people actually used it and follow them closely!

Mikel_S's gravatar

7. Subject

Posted by Mikel_S at 12:58AM, Wednesday August 26 2009

Is it only you guys? I'd love to join in the spam-I mean fun.

Esvandiary's gravatar

8. Oh my...

Posted by Esvandiary at 6:49PM, Wednesday August 26 2009

I... I think I love you. Signing up now.

Esvandiary's gravatar

9. Oh, wait...

Posted by Esvandiary at 6:50PM, Wednesday August 26 2009

In my haste I forgot that I can't sign up without Our Benevolent Overlord adding me...
It would be rather awesome if you could, Adam! :)

Cargo Cult's gravatar

10. New twits!

Posted by Cargo Cult at 7:24PM, Wednesday August 26 2009

Mikel_S: You're in, with that username and whatever comes before the '@' in your email address as a password.

Esvandiary: You're in too, with the username and password you're using on here.

List of twits here: http://www.hylobatidae.org/twit/

There'll be more linkering and featurisation when I find time. A global RSS feed for everything will be added once I add the necessary load balancing and database replication necessary to deal with such a gigantic, never-ceasing torrent of information! ... That, or when I hack the 'twitlist' page into something more than a couple of lines of code.

Enjoy, and once again - welcome to the world of nano-blogging!

Sortie's gravatar

11. Re: New twits!

Posted by Sortie at 11:06PM, Wednesday August 26 2009

Nice! It'd be more fun if there was a registration form on the service - so that people freely could join - with a function that seperates bots from humans (Like on this blog). Then I *could* post a link on Facebook and see the masses invade dear old hylobatidae. Whatever hylobatidea, means, really.

Mikel_S's gravatar

12. LOLOLOLOL

Posted by Mikel_S at 2:53AM, Thursday August 27 2009

LOLOLOLOL

Explain THIS timestamp to me...

"# octarine: twitted oncelast did so about half past nine in the evening tomorrow"

Last did so... TOMORROW??? Lol. I seriously laughed out loud.

Mikel_S's gravatar

13. Lolwait

Posted by Mikel_S at 2:54AM, Thursday August 27 2009

Oh, I looked and saw that alot of the timestamps were awkward:

"not monday" "on twit" etc. Still, it makes for funnies.

Mikel_S's gravatar

14. Sorry to spam, but...

Posted by Mikel_S at 2:55AM, Thursday August 27 2009

What DOES hylobatidae mean? Or what is it? Or how do you go about it?

Esvandiary's gravatar

15. To quote

Posted by Esvandiary at 6:57PM, Friday August 28 2009

To quote Adam from once over the hedge next Thursday (or, indeed Google), the genus comprising gibbons.

Apparently an old in-joke; but I will admit it does sound somewhat like an activity you wouldn't want your children seeing. :)

chiasaur11's gravatar

16. Can I pop in as well?

Posted by chiasaur11 at 2:02AM, Thursday September 3 2009

I know, it's rather ridiculous to want to be the twentieth person joining a clever but one note joke...

But isn't being a moron with a defective sense of humor what a twit is all about?

In other words, can I join the fun?

Omega's gravatar

17. likewise

Posted by Omega at 4:38AM, Thursday September 3 2009

yes, me as well

chiasaur11's gravatar

18. Mikel, an explanation

Posted by chiasaur11 at 8:05AM, Thursday September 3 2009

Octarine is the color of magic.

Time...

Acts a bit odd around it.

Cargo Cult's gravatar

19. Wibble

Posted by Cargo Cult at 7:24AM, Monday September 7 2009

Chiasaur11, Omega - your Twit accounts are active. Former uses password from here, latter uses whatever the first bit of your email address is.

Apologies about the delay.

For everyone else, the reason for this free-time distraction:

http://www.hylobatidae.org/misc/wibble.zip

Wibble!

Sortie's gravatar

20. Wibble!

Posted by Sortie at 5:23PM, Monday September 7 2009

Wibble! And it's pretty cool! Anyone care to explain me what I am looking at and more importantly why.

Pace's gravatar

21. Not another puzzle I presume?

Posted by Pace at 6:52PM, Monday September 7 2009

I just get a message from "Java Virtual Machine Launcher" when I try to run wibble.exe saying "Could not find the main class. Program will exit!" I'm using WinXP, and my Java should be up to date. I take it something more interesting than that is supposed to happen?
That is however a very impressively manly sized text file. Notepad seemed to become quite worried when it tried to open it.

Omega's gravatar

22. Island

Posted by Omega at 7:44PM, Monday September 7 2009

Pace, it brings up a 3D model of a few islands which you can use your mouse to move the camera around. I guess the questions are where and why?

Mikel_S's gravatar

23. BAH!

Posted by Mikel_S at 8:34PM, Monday September 7 2009

"windows cannot find javaw.exe" It won't launch.

Mikel_S's gravatar

24. Nevermind

Posted by Mikel_S at 8:41PM, Monday September 7 2009

It probably won't work with Windows 7...

Mikel_S's gravatar

25. Think before you post

Posted by Mikel_S at 8:44PM, Monday September 7 2009

This is what I learned. I downloaded java (didn't have it, heh) and it seems to be working now.

Mikel_S's gravatar

26. A final thought...

Posted by Mikel_S at 8:57PM, Monday September 7 2009

That's not that island that's threatening to have a massive earthquake, dropping half of the mountain into the ocean and devastating the west coast of the US... is it?

Pace's gravatar

27. spoilers ho

Posted by Pace at 9:36PM, Monday September 7 2009

Ah, my poor neglected copy of Vista had no problems getting it to work. Odd.

My subconscious startles me sometimes. I looked at it top down for a moment, and 'Hawaii' jumped into my head. I've never been there, would've sworn I've no idea what the islands look like, but sure enough, it's Maui. A vacation spot methinks?

Omega's gravatar

28. photo

Posted by Omega at 9:42PM, Monday September 7 2009

I suspect a particularly large update to one's Flickr account.

Mikel_S's gravatar

29. Hope

Posted by Mikel_S at 2:08AM, Tuesday September 8 2009

Hope ya had a good time!

Cargo Cult's gravatar

30. Heh

Posted by Cargo Cult at 8:28AM, Tuesday September 8 2009

There's no hidden message anywhere, for a change - and I haven't been on holiday. Maui was chosen as a test of my heightfield-o-matic code 'cause I'd already done Mount St. Helens, and Hawaii itself was so large it was crashing my crappy programming. Plus, it looks surprisingly dull. Basic need was a volcano (because they look cool) in the USA (so digital elevation models are freely available.)

(Plug: http://processing.org/ - it's like BASIC for the 21st century!)

Hope you like the programmatical river generation. Thousands of virtual raindrops, all heading downhill - and on a random walk if the reach a local minimum...

Cargo Cult's gravatar

31. Also...

Posted by Cargo Cult at 8:32AM, Tuesday September 8 2009

I never expected to see Java pushing around a hundred million triangles per second on a laptop. Speedy-speedy-speedy!

(Of course, actually *changing* any of those humungously obese OpenGL display lists will absolutely murder performance. As will a lack of video memory...)

Omega's gravatar

32. still

Posted by Omega at 1:51AM, Wednesday September 9 2009

still sexy though!

Obliterous's gravatar

33. Quiet in teh forums...

Posted by Obliterous at 3:15AM, Wednesday September 9 2009

But I guess with Adam's time being chewed up at the Good Shop, it's expected.

Mikel_S's gravatar

34. JAVAWESOM!

Posted by Mikel_S at 4:32PM, Wednesday September 9 2009

OMG! I'm taking an Intro to Game Software Development course for my Game Design & Development major, and the first class is... Java.

Cargo Cult's gravatar

35. Java am speshul

Posted by Cargo Cult at 6:43AM, Thursday September 10 2009

From a friend:

Integer i1 = 127;
Integer i2 = 127;
Integer j1 = 128;
Integer j2 = 128;

System.out.println( i1 == i2 );
System.out.println( j1 == j2 );

Should print 'true' for both, right?

Omega's gravatar

36. friend?

Posted by Omega at 7:18AM, Thursday September 10 2009

a friend? sounds like that TSW ARG going on right now.

Daedrith's gravatar

37. Re: Java am speshul

Posted by Daedrith at 2:55PM, Thursday September 10 2009

The == operator will compare the pointer address for objects. Since i1, i2... are defined as Integer objects, == compares the address of where those objects are allocated. Intuitively, given this knowledge, both lines would print "false", but I believe Java, when it "boxes" the primitive int into an Integer object, it'll cache and reuse Integer objects with values from -128 to 127 (or some similar range), so I believe in this case the first line will print true and the second line will print false.

Obliterous's gravatar

38. Re: Java am speshul

Posted by Obliterous at 5:07PM, Thursday September 10 2009

Daedrith,

Say what?

Implicit pointers, and implicit silent dereferencing??

That's F*cked up.

I've never touched java, all of My code is done in some variant of C/C++,perl and PHP.

I'm suddenly very glad I never have the time to try picking up Java.

--Different subject:

Adam/Cargo Cult: Your'e working over in hellview/jerkland (I HATE the traffic) now, yes? To whom should I direct E-mail with questions about what is cannon??

My brother and I are working on a map set / mod and we want to be sure that we don't conflict with the official storyline.

Scone's gravatar

39. Re: Java am speshul

Posted by Scone at 2:19AM, Thursday September 24 2009

You can fix the problem by overloading the '==' operator so that it actually compares the int values within the objects.

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