Rain Gryphon

So... Whilst engaged in the traditional furry pastime of organizing my collection of, um, animal pictures, I created a new folder in Win10, then selected some files to move into it. I failed to realize that the new folder was also selected. I will give Win10 credit in that it flagged recursively nesting a folder as probably not being something I had actually intended to do. I'm pleased on the whole, as I like an OS that does as it's told, but do appreciate a warning for questionable commands. I wonder now if I'd done it, whether it would have filled my drive with copies, or maybe just created some sort of pointer from the folder to itself? Something to try if I decide to re-image this machine.

*****

I have to wonder too just what the hell happened with Renault? Both cars just shutting themselves off, on the same corner of the same lap, has got to be a software issue, whatever Renault says.

I don't really like using computers to run race cars, but I suppose it's appropriate, given that production cars are operated that way anymore. R&D is pretty much what keeps the big teams involved. I'd still love to see all the downforce generators taken off. Those, at any rate, have no relationship to production vehicles.

Surreal sight as well, when everyone is afraid to touch a car, for fear that the energy management system will electrocute them. For more than a century, touching the hot exhaust was about the only hazard an inert race car offered. The March of Progress!

And now I'm trying to think of people who've been injured in unusual ways by dead cars. There's ol' AJ Foyt, of course, who broke his nose by clobbering a tire with a humongous wrench trying to free a stuck suspension element (it bounced back and hit him), although I'm not sure that's really on the car.

I recall Jean Marcenac listening to the '49 Five Hundred from the hospital (a famous tale in itself, in that he could identify, over the radio broadcast, Dennis 'The Iron Duke' Nalon riding his clutch to the start, and he was absolutely correct), and I think it was that very car that put him there, but don't recall the details. Both of the twin Novis seemed to have a curse on them anyway.

*****

Good on Trump for stopping South American aid. The money was obviously being wasted. I hope he'll close the Mexican border as well, perhaps permanently. Those people are not our friends. I am sick as hell of the situation, and wouldn't mind a bit if we had to engage in some regime change to get a friendly government in place.

*****

Some guy fell into the Grand Canyon. The coroner's office say they're investigating the cause of death. Offhand, I'm gonna guess whole-body impact.

If I meet my doom by falling into the Grand Canyon, I hope I have the presence of mind to yell "Oy Veeeyyyyyyy..." on the way down, and that someone videos that. And as the camera follows me down, I'll dwindle to a dot, and then there'll be a tiny puff of dust, and a few seconds later, a faint 'poom...', and I will have achieved oneness with the Coyote.

*****

It's 2019, and here I sit playing the modern implementation of "Lemmings". And... While it's pretty true to the original design and feel of the game, something is hinky. It takes about two minutes to load. The explosions aren't real-time. The explosion animation plays, clears away, you briefly see the undamaged map, and then the crater appears. No flying, bouncing debris, and each crater is identical. No physics engine for the explosions, apparently. Worse still, when I pushed 'nuke' with 90 lemmings in play, it pretty much used all my processor (holy shit!), and bogged down to about one frame every three seconds. They all exploded at the exact same time, too. On my old 486, I could pack 'em all in a tiny space, nuke 'em, and they'd go off in rapid sequence like a string of firecrackers, maybe eight to ten a second, chewing their way down through the rock with debris flying everywhere as they fell into the crater and then exploded in turn. I loved the game when I played it as designed, but I also liked seeing how much of the landscape I could obliterate too. It accomodated me however I wanted to play, which is characteristic of a good toy. The new one plays adequately (apart from the explosions) when you play it as a puzzle, but is worthless if you just want to relax by blowing stuff up and giggling. Why? This machine, cheap laptop that it is, is nonetheless a monster compared to that 486. I can do animation and video processing, but what's essentially a 16 bit game is too much for it? I doubt that. I suspect that the repro game is built on some generic engine, rather than actually being programmed.