Impending Birthday + TheBigGame30 dates announced
So, it’s that time of year again - my birthday’s rolling around again this Saturday. If you want, feel free to put some rockets in the sky in my name (note: I am not responsible if said rockets strike anything or explode and kill anyone - you have been warned). If you don’t want to, read on.
I’ve been struggling this year to pick something I want to buy myself for my birthday or even to accept presents from my parents. Although my financial outlook is pretty dire (I don’t even have a job), I can’t bring myself to accept anything from anyone (even if they’re buying lunch I have to chip in to it and feel bad if they refuse to accept it). I normally think of this as just being as kind as possible and living within my own means, but am I just being too nice? I’ll probably end up going out for the day somewhere (probably Portsmouth (exotic, eh?)) and possibly maybe buying myself a cheap 50mm lens or something (although they’ll probably still force me to accept them purchasing it for me).
Anyhow, the south-coast LAN party I somehow won last time just opened up sign-ups for their next event, usefully entitled XXX (hopefully without the porn, but they aren’t guaranteeing anything). It’s running from Friday 27th January 2012 (christ, are we already talking about 2012?) through to Sunday 29th at the usual venue of Wildern School, and you can find out more about it here. And fuck yes, I’ll be there with my golden joystick in one hand and my keyboard in the other defending my title.
Reliable date overflow
About Coquelicot
A reasonable amount of people have been asking what the christ a coquelicot is, so here’s a blog post about it because I’m nice like that.
Coquelicot or coquelico (KOHK-lee-koh) is the wild corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas, hence also the bright red color, tinted with orange of its flowers. In French, coquelicot is a vernacular name of this poppy. Claude Monet painted “Les Coquelicots” or “Poppies Blooming” in 1873.
Happy? Okay.
Coquelicot is basically fpconnect. It lets developers get their mittens at Facepunch specific data without having to dick about with page scraping, and it’s also a great way of working out who exactly a user is. For the clients, it’s an easy-to-use interface to bring applications that want to use some of your Facepunch data (like “are you a gold member? should we be showing you this porn?”) to fruition. There used to be a OpenID interface to the Facepunch API, but for some reason that nobody will ever know garry pulled it.
Coquelicot is a login gateway, but somewhat a service in its own right. Although Coquelicot users need Facepunch accounts active and verified (using a simple “add this to your profile page” system), it treats Coquelicot users completely separately from their FP accounts. Want to log into an app using your Facepunch account, but don’t want to fiddle about making an account at Coquelicot? Don’t panic, it’ll support OpenID accounts (including Steam) from launch with the exact same feature set you’d get from a proper login. Plus, if the app just wants to verify your identity for its own purposes, you can opt to do one-time verification without even touching a Coquelicot account (although you have to verify each time you use the app).
Coquelicot is designed to stop developers from wasting hours of code. There’s a DRAFT version of the documentation available here, and I’m constantly adding new things to the to-do list, so don’t consider it complete. Things WILL change before I even get v0.1 of the API out the door. The API acts rather similar to oauth (in that you have to get a request token and that gumf), but does have some tweaks. I might provide an OpenID provider for Coquelicot / Facepunch accounts at a later date if there’s demand for it.
Most importantly, Coquelicot isn’t out yet. There’s a closed developer preview going on for specially selected individuals only, and even then the API hasn’t had a shred of work done to it since I started work at the beginning of August. If you have some fantastic idea that would work awesome with Coquelicot, fire an email in the direction of fpconnect@duck.me.uk. If my college work doesn’t interfere too much with the work I’m doing on this, expect a public beta by the end of this month.
Final point of note: Coquelicot is NOT the launch name. fpconnect will eventually reside at connect.facepun.ch, courtesy of Hexxeh.
How to become a pro gamer
So somehow last weekend I won theBIGGAMER 29 as well as that shiny trophy above, which is now sitting on top of my cabinet. Although I normally suck at games in general (proof: ask to play any RTS game ever made with me), it’s become clear that I should become a pro gamer to further my skills. Hence, a checklist:
- Buy as much DLC for every game ever produced, including all of the Call of Duty games.
- Also buy overpriced gaming peripherals such as those manufactured by Alienware and Razer (maybe a sponsorship)
- Rage mouth off every time I die
Speaking seriously though (wow that’s a change), I had no idea I was going to get a win like that in my lifetime. There were far better players in that room than me, but I somehow stepped up a gear, got into phase, and played like a boss. Maybe it was the combination of large pizza + too many litres of Diet Coke.
Some subdomain downtime over the next couple days
Due to me running out of wifi time while migrating over to HexxehVPS, some subdomains will be offline until Sunday. These include:
- s.luaduck.co.uk (screenshots)
goldmembers.luaduck.co.uknot coming back up, sorry!- weather.luaduck.co.uk
While I’d love to get these back up and running right now, I simply don’t have the time or equipment to be able to do it while in France. When I get back home and I’m settled back in, I’ll be able to fiddle around with nginx’s really daft config system a little more.
All downtime has been resolved.
I’m sorry but when a company makes no effort to clarify to its members what its intentions are then it loses ALL credibility. Ensuring that as many people as possible leave brohoster and / or begin legal proceedings (where appropriate) is now my top priority, and damnit I was going to have ice cream as my top priority for today. Thanks for ruining my holiday with this, but then again, thanks for letting me watch your ship sink.
If somehow you feel the need to contact me privately with a takedown request for this post, fire your imaginary lawyers at me@luaduck.co.uk. I will expect a signed domain or some other proof of legitimacy, and you should also be aware that any emails that I recieve on that address from you will be posted to the public domain.
Holiday unavailability
Due to the fact that I need to catch my prescribed ”too much” sun this year, I’m heading down to the south o’ france for a couple weeks. I will hopefully have a 50mb-cap roaming data sim to stay in touch, but I won’t really be available (excluding emergencies) until the 25th June. If an emergency does arise for whatever reason, use the usual channels (including mobile if I’ve given it to you) to let me know and I’ll see what I can do about it.
I’ll send you a postcard or something.
Google Translate adventures v2: Steam edition
I’m not really sure what the fuck just happened, so I’ll dump it here for you guys to decipher.
- 23:45 - jzvoltage.veg: http://www.youtube.com/user/jzVOLTAGE => sub me pls :p
- 23:52 - luaduck | Back attack: who are you
- 23:54 - jzvoltage.veg: jzvoltage:p
- 23:54 - jzvoltage.veg: subscribe me pls
- 23:55 - luaduck | Back attack: why
- 23:55 - luaduck | Back attack: why should I subscribe to you
- 23:55 - jzvoltage.veg: lol for me :p
- 23:55 - luaduck | Back attack: okay
- 23:55 - luaduck | Back attack: so let me get this straight
- 23:55 - luaduck | Back attack: you
- 23:55 - luaduck | Back attack: want me to subscribe
- 23:56 - luaduck | Back attack: to your channel that I haven’t even clicked on yet
- 23:56 - luaduck | Back attack: just to entertain you
- 23:56 - jzvoltage.veg: lol
- 23:56 - jzvoltage.veg: http://www.youtube.com/user/jzVOLTAGE => sub me pls :p
- 23:56 - jzvoltage.veg: ;)
- 23:57 - jzvoltage.veg: http://www.youtube.com/user/jzVOLTAGE => sub me pls :p
- 23:58 - luaduck | Back attack: give me a legitimate reason to subscribe to your channel
- 23:58 - luaduck | Back attack: what can you bring to my inbox
- 23:58 - jzvoltage.veg: amazing clip ;)
- 23:59 - luaduck | Back attack: I’m not really sure what you’re getting at
- 23:59 - luaduck | Back attack: is this a troll account, are you trying to get a machinima contract, did your mommy just buy you a capture card
- 23:59 - luaduck | Back attack: because you’re doing all 3 very badly
- 23:59 - jzvoltage.veg: omg it’s just an video lol
- 04 June 2011
- 00:00 - luaduck | Back attack: my advice
- 00:00 - jzvoltage.veg: kk
- 00:00 - luaduck | Back attack: http://www.youtube.com/account?feature=mhum#manage/delete
- 00:00 - luaduck | Back attack: click the button called “Close Account”
- 00:00 - luaduck | Back attack: you’ll be doing the entirety of the internet a huge favor
- 00:01 - jzvoltage.veg: kk
- 00:01 - luaduck | Back attack: google will no longer have to buy new drives to fit your videos on
- 00:01 - luaduck | Back attack: as a result all the terrorist organisations will declare world peace
- 00:01 - luaduck | Back attack: and will instead hunt you down and give you a bullet for your trouble
- 00:01 - luaduck | Back attack: thank you
- 00:01 - luaduck | Back attack: for providing valuable material for my blog
Shoutpunch (again) & Shenanigans
So apparently the original gang (minus me of course) over at Shoutpunch decided to start it up again for the 50,000’th time. Of course, last time I threw up a huge cloud of dust about it last time, but this time I really don’t have the energy to give a fuck. If anything, good on them for trying it again. I have told a couple of people working on it that it was completely pointless to try starting it up again (for many, many reasons that if I listed here would cause tumblr to crash due to buffer overflow), but hey, let them do what they want. My only issue that I have with any *punch project is that it’s always Shogunn3r trying to work his ass off to make himself look like less of a complete prat (and probably to get himself unbanned). Any project that’s stupid enough to have him onboard is going to go downhill, but as said previously, I really don’t have the energy to give a fuck.
In other news, yes, I did go after guniv’s shit yesterday. He deserved it. That is all.
I’ve been speed-testing Facepunch for iPhone to see just how fast it really goes. The answer? Very.
