It appears that Jan 2011, is undisputedly Hooded Badger’s busiest month so far, with contributions from new writers (myself included), which is actually great, building up a backlog of interesting content, and on this most auspicious of occasions I’ve decided to try and get one more post in before we roll over to the clean slate that is February.

It is a piece of music (that has come back up in my Youtube playlist while I’m tidying the bomb-site that is my room courtesy of 5-7 days putting in a lot of hours of Degree work and also Storm FM work), that looks at the way popular music seems to be created following a similar pattern, but as the old adage goes, ‘If it aint broke don’t fix it’

A Selection of the ‘greatest’ pop songs from the last X years, using only the same 4 chords…

Sunday usually sends me off looking for chilled relaxing tracks.  Today therefore my musical selection is Pyro by Kings of Leon, taken from their current album; Come Around Sundown.

Ok, Im going to go on a bit of a tangent here but I need to vent. There have been several security alerts in Northern Ireland this week, those behind it think they are big and clever. I’m telling you now its not! Its bloody irritating and the only thing its achieving is pissing people off and causing them inconvience. I am very proud of being from Northern Ireland but its things like this that gives the country a bad name. Hoax bombs in Ballyclare and areas of Belfast not to mention a viable bomb on the Antrim road in Belfast have caused disruption and annoyance. But not fear; or at least that is the way the media have portrayed it. The Chief Constable for the PSNI Matt Baggot stated this week that those who planted the bomb in a busy area of North Belfast had “the same recklessness and mindset of those that brough about the Omagh tragedy.”
There has been talk this week that the province is slipping back into its old ways. But I totally disagree, we have come so far that we cannot go back. We are no longer passive. Omagh is a perfect example of this, those responsible are being brought to justice and that is because of the courage of conviction of the people. Michael Gallagher who lost his son in the Omagh bomb often uses the quote from Irish politician Edmund Burke; “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I think that this is something people from Northern Ireland need to remember, especially when bomb threats are creeping back into becoming a part of everyday life. We should not have to live in fear.

Something I’m listening to at the moment

Nero – Me And You

Quite like the video too…

Time for a bit of a plug for one of my favourite hobbies.  Airsoft is a pasttime similar to paintball, but with “realistic imitation firearms” (I for instance am a proud owner of an M4 and an MP5).  Don’t let the name scare you, mind.  Unlike paintball markers, airsoft weapons fire much lighter 6mm plastic BB’s, to greater ranges, and many are capable of full-automatic fire.  This hurts less, and is much more enjoyable in my opinion.

The hobby as a whole took a massive hit a few years back with the Violent Crime Reduction bill and some bad press from ill informed individuals and media.  As such, it very nearly died out.  Thankfully, airsoft is still alive in the UK. So without further delay, I bring you a video below of what you can expect if you decide to give it a go.

P.S. For those up in Bangor, there’s an excellent site on Anglesey run by a group called OTT adventures.

There’s a new first person shooter due out this year called Brink.  I’m actually a little bit excited about the gameplay ideas they’re throwing about, especially with regards to customisation and breaking down barriers between multi and single player.  May be worth a peek if you’re curious and looking to break out of that Call of Duty rut.

No, not me, well okay…kind of me.  However i hope you’ll understand where I’m coming from when you read this

(85-90% of you can stop reading now) While i was programming last week i came across a language I hadn’t seen before, it’s called ‘Brainfuck’ (Real Programming language…)

<geekery>Minimalistic esoteric programming language created in 1993, and only has 8 true commands, everything else it does is only an adaption of such, was invented to try and be a Turing-complete language, with the smallest possible compiler, and it looks something like this

The following code displays fibonacci numbers under 100…

+++++++++++
>+>>>>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<<<<<<[>[>>>>>>+>
+<<<<<<<-]>>>>>>>[<<<<<<<+>>>>>>>-]<[>++++++++++[-
<-[>>+>+<<<-]>>>[<<<+>>>-]+<[>[-]<[-]]>[<<[>>>+<<<
-]>>[-]]<<]>>>[>>+>+<<<-]>>>[<<<+>>>-]+<[>[-]<[-]]
>[<<+>>[-]]<<<<<<<]>>>>>[+++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++.[-]]++++++++++<[->-<]>++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.[-]<<
<<<<<<<<<<[>>>+>+<<<<-]>>>>[<<<<+>>>>-]<-[>>.>.<<<
[-]]<<[>>+>+<<<-]>>>[<<<+>>>-]<<[<+>-]>[<+>-]<<<-]

Hope you join me in saying wthat the fuck…
And in Java

public class Fibonacci {
    public static long fib(int n) {
        if (n <= 1) return n;
        else return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int N = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
        for (int i = 1; i <= N; i++)
            System.out.println(i + ": " + fib(i));
    }

}

To the average person, both of those may look complete bollocks, just thought I’d share my recent findings, feel free to offer your opinions </geekery>

More Info…

Ash

Am watching supersize me at the moment (as S4C does everything later), but I don’t think it’s having the effect it should, its making me hungry, dammit, I want a Big-Mac Still, interesting.

May go get some food actually… - Monday May 9th 2005

I remember this night, because when I got to my favourite kebab shop, it was closed (this was really late at night, they were all closed). Also, I’d like to mention that in those days (yes, I realise that makes me sound very old) we didn’t have Channel 4 in Bangor, just S4C.

In one of my random moments I suddenly remembered that my old blogs are still hidden away somewhere.  It’s always a bit odd looking over things you wrote years ago, but it’s also sort of like counting rings on a tree, a pretty nifty cross-section of your life.

So, with this in mind, I’m starting a series of posts titled ‘Flashback’ where I’ll pick random posts, in no particular order, from the last eight years.  Starting with this post, from November 2004.

So hungry. I’d eat a squirrel if the buggers weren’t so damn fast. Damn them. – November 29th 2004

I was clearly easily distracted in 2004.