ROBOCOP FTW

"They celebrate Easter the exact same way we do: commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit … left chocolate eggs in the night. Now, I wonder why we're fucked up as a race. Anybody got any idea? You know, I've read the Bible. I can't find the word "bunny" or "chocolate" anywhere in the fucking book. Where do they come up with this shit?"

Happy Easter from me and Bill. :P I'm having soft tacos for lunch, which is how they list the tradition in the Gideon Bible, I think. Otherwise, it's a lazy, cold day off from work.

As previously mentioned, I purchased the Robocop three-pack from work the other day. I didn't actually end up watching it the other night, I went to bed instead. So I watched the first flick today instead.

I had forgotten how funny the movie is. Funny story about that, Robocop came out right around my eighth birthday. My mom was dating my soon-to-be stepdad, who took us all to see it. I was eight. At Robocop. Which was pretty damn close to being rated X. I loved it- had a bunch of the toys, watched the cartoon, played the arcade game whenever I could. Speaking of which, was the arcade game as good as I remember it? In my mind, it's right up there with Spy Hunter, Wrestlefest, TMNT, etc. in the pantheon of Good Arcade Games From When I Was A Kid. Perhaps I shall download it for MAME, er go find an arcade, er download it for MAME and see if it rocks the way I think it does. All I remember was that you pretty much needed the Cobra Assault Cannon powerup to fight the bosses. Or a shitload of quarters, as you did in every arcade game back then.

I think I'm getting sick. My throat's been sore since yesterday, which I was hoping was just due to dust in the house. I woke up today and I've got a nice sinus fog and my throat is worse. Go me. I don't ever get sick, so it's time to overmedicate and then laze around the house some more. And probably be better in time for work tomorrow. Maybe.

Easter Sunday text message update! ZKAT is good, cute, and full of sugar today. (Pink and yellow Cinderella dress with silver shoes, for those keeping track.) There is apparently a egg hunt later that she will be partaking in. It's cold up there too, but the egg hunt is in the mall, I guess. I picked up Charlotte's Web for her last week; we were selling it with a copy of the book, which is always a bonus. BOOKS: CHECK EM OUT.

Did you see that someone beat me to the LEGO Mindstorms Wii Bowler bot? Perfect game like woah. Way to go, guys and/or gals. That seriously rocks.

Their design is pretty close to how I saw it in my head, although I saw it as being less squat and more tall, probably because that's how I figured the Wiimote would have to move in order to emulate a human playing. I wonder how much trial and error it took to find out that the Wiimote could spin around the axis and emulate the throw... I figured I would have to have it swing down like one of those pirate ship rides at an amusement park and then reset itself after every throw, which would have made it more tall, Tower of Terror style!

They released the program code for it, which is terribly, terribly, terribly simple. Good Lord... keep it simple stupid. I was curious to see how they handled the loop, which I was going to terribly complicate. I was thinking that you'd have to have the bot listen for the chime that the Wiimote makes when it is a player's turn to bowl, and then start the loop, which is fine up until the tenth frame, when the three throws cause the remote to stop chiming. Fifteen second loops, infinitely. I need more programming practice. I really was going to make that a lot more complicated. It presses A, it grabs the trigger, it swings, 0.25 seconds elapse, it stops grabbing the trigger, it stops the swing, back to start.

(PSA! Ben and Jerry's has Free Ice Cream Day on April 17th. This notice is mostly for me to remember, and I'm not even sure there is a B&J around here, haha.)