Damn but it’s cold here in Cape Town today. There are chunks of ice falling out of the sky, and I am wayyyyy pleased I don’t have to go out there for any reason.

It’s been both gratifying and humbling to see how many of you have downloaded the Intrepid OST – thank you very much. It turns out I made a screwup in the mp3 pack, Track 17 was wrong. This has now been fixed, but if you’d like just the correct track without having to download the whole thing again, you can grab it here.

Now then. Karl and I had a great doef-doef session today where we dusted off something we began ages ago. It’s coming along really well, getting a good solid feel in this track. Bonus points if you can identify the source of the brass samples in use, though I can’t imagine anyone but a member of my family guessing this.

If you’re a female vocalist and you can do house and kwaito vox, please get in touch.

Annnnnnnd as it’s Friday:

Weird Scifi Sewers
This is a gallery of pictures of the Japanese sewer system. It is mind bogglingly cool – the structures down there are massive, and remind me a lot of elements from HR Giger and Bladerunner and The Lord of the Rings … check it out, it’s extremely cool.

Unfortunate product placement
I have a love-hate relationship with advertising. On the one hand, I really think that a lot of it is art. Or can be. But I also hate how it’s everywhere. This page has a lovely list of instances where the message of the ad got a little warped by it’s placement. With picturey goodness.

Tiny little PC
Okay, you have to be a bit geeky to appreciate this, but I think it’s genius. A PC the size of a paperback novel – and cheap! It won’t run the latest games, but that’s not what it’s for. 12 out of 10 for form factor. I want one. Heck, I want two!

Wizards that could kick Harry Potter’s ass
It’s technically redundant, because we all know that without his wand, any one of us could kick Harry’s ass. Were I in Fight Club, I would fight Harry Potter.

Ahhhhhh cute!
It’s a doggy this week. I don’t normally do doggies, but this is gorgeous.

So, we’re still on track to release the OST next week, which I’m looking forward to as a personal milestone. I’ve spent so much time working on other people’s projects; it’s really exciting to be releasing something of my own for a change.

Until the official release, here’s another clip. This is scene 22, the second appearance of the mysterious nemesis, and the crew of the Intrepid go to Red Alert.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd then, because it’s Friday …

Eat Liver
These guys collect the latest stoopid pictures doing the rounds on a semi-daily basis. Good for a chuckle, but also a bit random, by which I mean that although most of the pictures are amusing, some may scar your brain. You have been warned.

Best Old Games
If you’re around my age, you know that although today’s games are better to look at, they aren’t necessarily better to play. You also remember a time when 640k was a huuuuuuuuuuge amount of memory. Gaze in wonder, then, at this mighty repository of Abandonware. It’s all entirely legal to download, too. Eeeeee, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, do they Dorris? No. No they don’t.

Optical Illusions
Mangle your brain with this fine collection of optical illusions. My favourite is the colour perception one – the shadow on the chessboard. My head will not accept that the two squares are the same colour, even though I’ve gone and proved it to myself with Potatoshop’s eyedropper tool. Mental.

The All Singing All Dancing Hardgeus
The personal homepage of a geek I find inspiring – not only for his geekiness, but for his formidable weightloss. This link will take you through to the weightloss portion of his site, which is an amusing read in and of itself. The true gold is on the third page in, however, where there is a time lapse animation of the weight coming off. Oddly hypnotic. Also scary when it loops and he transforms from hot to gross again.

Fluffeh time
Obligatory kittens. Ahhhhhh.

This is a clip from the back end of Scene 9 where Navar is trying to discourage the crew from investigating the new alien species too closely. I had originally intended this to be Navar’s theme of duplicity, but it just didn’t pan out that way.

In the end, it just didn’t fit where I intended it later, so scene 9 is its lone appearance.

And now, as it’s a Friday, and on the off-chance you are reading this from your desk when you are supposed to be working, here are some amusements:

XKCD
Brilliant and highly geeky webcomic about life, love, and all things intarwebz. Often sharply insightful. You don’t have to be a nerd to read it, but it helps.

Monkey Fluids
Amusing site where a chap called Josh scans pictures out of old Boys Own-type books and re-captions them. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And funny.

Chris has annoyed me for the last time
I was mucking about with After Effects, this is the gory result. Probably NSFW for graphic, if ridiculous, violence.

Purple and Brown
What is this? What is this? I don’t know, but I can’t stop watching. It tickles me in that strange mystical place that makes everything funny to a 2 year old.

I can has cheezburger?
You may. No list of amusements is complete without some fluff. Hooray for kitties!