JUNK RUNTAH

B is for Bird Print by teafly

I saw this print on ETSY and love how cute it is, its so colorful and vibrant and the style is very playful and different from other birds that Ive seen from other artists. You can see more art from this artist at teafly. The print is printed on archival ink and paper and ship flat. It would be a nice decor for a kids room.


This print from teafly also reminded me of these two business card styles that I worked on a few days ago. Ive been drawing birdie lately and putting them in my MAUpromos ETSY shop. My style is very different compare to teafly, but I think both has their own charm, what do you think?


Then, I found this lovely print from joom, its name is " Birdie Queen in the Cage Print ". You can get it here. Again, still birdies, but different in style. This style is simple but a bit more colorful than mine and has more element in it like the little stars and circles, dotted line for the cage.

Available link for download

Art Is Definitely A Real Thing OK

I am waiting for the plumber.

He was meant to be here twenty-five minutes ago but has not showed up, and frankly I am beginning to feel rather rejected.

I wasnt sure whether or not he would need to turn off the water so, just in case, I have filled the kettle and two pints glasses full of water, imagining somehow that I might die of thirst between now and 11.30 when I have to leave for work, that Ben will come home to find me strewn across the floor like a bison, all ribs and woe.

(Some time later)

He is here now. Very, very clatterbangcrash-based activity going on upstairs. I am crouching over my computer trying to ignore the fact that almost as soon as he arrived and therefore I could no longer use (ahem) the facilities, I began to need a panic-wee. I am ludicrous.

He is big with big boots on, and has brought into the house a massive trolley with what can only be described as tools on it. Loads, though, not just the ones I understand like screwdrivers and hairdryers. I am a bit in awe of him. He can just wander into someones house with loads of bits of metal (welded specifically to be useful) and understand how a bath works and what to clatterbangcrash to make it into a shower.

I, on the very stark other hand, am nervously writing about him on the Internet. What forking paths we take. (Please note: forking to mean diverging, rather than a pretend swear.)

I am relieved that I am teaching this afternoon, so at least I can feel like I am giving something to society.

Yesterday I had an excellent day of working on The Project: 2012, which is a show that I am, along with two excellent friends, taking to Edinburgh next year for the festival. We are working together in some respects but each of us is creating our own work. My show is going to be about £$^*&()*_)*%£ %^&((* %^£@£&*@ &%$%$^*()%$$^^.

(I am not able to say it yet, because I am too scared. I have been practising saying HELLO I AM AN ARTIST AND THIS IS WHAT MY WORK IS ABOUT without wanting to throw up. What always happens is that I mumble something about a cello and then quickly say that I also teach so we can talk about teaching rather than AAAAAAAHHHHHRRRT (vomit) because its much, much, much easier and doesnt involve spontaneous panic-weeing.)

Yesterday was cool, though. I did, like, stuff and it was good. Part of it involves trawling the wide-eyed archives of this blog, which is pretty forking embarrassing, I can tell you. I quite like doing it, particularly because its for my ahrt and so not as self-indulgent as it could be. Although it is still pretty self-indulgent. Sometimes thats OK, perhaps.

Oh God. Is it acceptable to ask the plumber to wait outside the bathroom so I can have a wee? I might just risk implosion and wait until I get to the station, which also will cost me 30p. Maybe I will ask for some wee-money for Christmas.

(Some more time later)

Oh my God he just left the flat, not saying when he was coming back, so I locked the door to the flat and dashed upstairs (I would have just locked the door to the bathroom, but it was propped open heavily. I am not so mental that I have to lock the front door every time I have a wee). I wonder whether he has just intuited that I needed a wee so discreetly left for a bit. That must be the sign of someone who is good at their job.

This is all too dramatic for me when I have work to do. I cannot concentrate at all. My concentration ability must be extremely flimsy.

I am going to go and do some ahhhrt before I do my teaching (LOOK I AM NOT A WASTER I HAVE A REAL JOB LOVE ME LOVE ME VALIDATE ME, etc etc).

Off you go, do something excellent.

Available link for download

Australia Warning This Post Is Almost As Long As The Film

Its May and things are going from good to better, to bad to worse, to great, to alrightish-once-Ive-had-this-cup-of-tea-and-oh-is-that-a-muffin? to just life. I have far too many things to say in one post, so I will attempt to whittle them down. (I have failed to do any real whittling. More wittering that whittling, really. Sorry.)

Australia flew by in a flurry of dismal attempts to be upgraded on planes, gingham tents in garages, small, energetic dogs, beaches, kangaroos, sunsets, beer, sushi, birthdays and suspended vegetarianism. It was marvellous. My impulse when attempting to describe three weeks of holiday in a few sentences is to launch into detailed descriptions of the weather. I am going to resist, though, and try and tell you what the holiday itself was actually like. I will aim for brevity. (Again, FAIL.)

There were four of us visiting - Ben, his Mum, his Dad and me. Laura (Bens sister) and her partner Rob live in a wooden floored house in the suburbs of Melbourne. Ben and I stayed in a delightfully-constructed gingham gazebo in the garage. (However, unlike any that I have seen, this garage was free of dusty boxes of crap, which made the experience considerably more pleasant for us.) Some days Laura and Rob were working, so we all took ourselves off on adventures around Melbourne. I hadnt realized quite how nice a city Melbourne would be. I have been to Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane and Darwin, and I must say I preferred Melbourne to all those places. It seems small and friendly, whilst also managing to be lively and a bit glamorous. What a clever balance to strike. At first I was a bit suspicious of all the happy, trendy people in the bars and cafés. It all seemed a little too perfect. Laughing trendily and sipping at excellent wine, they all had a joie de vivre that confused me. It seemed odd to me that nobody was screaming at their children or swearing at passers-by. Their skin was tanned, and not at all the shade of grey to which I have become accustomed. The sun was out, and yet all the men appeared still to be wearing their tops, and none of them were proudly sporting third degree burns. It was baffling.

I quickly found that, even without these simple home comforts, I felt pretty relaxed in Melbourne. Ben and I traipsed about taking pictures of the amazing graffiti in the lanes, and went to the achingly cool Until Never gallery. We did this on our own, so as not to bore his parents and sister with our joint love of street art, but there were plenty of family trips as well. We spent a few nights on Phillip Island, where we watched the penguins on their twilight journey from the sea to their hillside nests. We sat on the beach with our binoculars, peering at the little birds as they huddled together and ran across the sand. The following day we went to a wildlife reserve. By that point I had started to feel a little interesting-animaled out (we had seen some extremely soporific koalas that day), so trailed into the wildlife reserve without a great degree of enthusiasm. I was wrong, though, as it turned out to be brilliant.

Kangaroos and wallabies boinged freely about, eagerly nibbling the feed we had been given to offer them. At first I found the kangaroos inexplicably scary. I think it was the way that they could be right over there, looking idly at a piece of grass and contemplating life, then suddenly, at the merest rustle of a paper bag, they would have bounced over in a single, terrifying leap, nosing into your hands and slapping their great tails in the dust. I did a lot of hiding behind Bens arm, until he managed to shake me off and I was on my own, nervously being eyed by ten hungry marsupials. They paled, though, in comparison to the emus, who were also freely stalking the sixty acre park. Huge, ungainly things, I couldnt help but interpret their cold stare as that of a gangster who is planning to wreak some terrible revenge on you, but who will psychologically torment you first by silently standing behind you while you are warily feeding kangaroos. Walking through the mob of emus (that is the actual collective noun, I looked it up) all I could think was I CANNOT OUT RUN THEM. THERE IS NOWHERE TO HIDE. Ben fed one, and it nearly snapped his hand off. I crept back to the kangaroos, who suddenly seemed like adorable newborn kittens in comparison.

My birthday was lovely. Ben made french toast for breakfast, complete with maple syrup, strawberries and cream, and delicious coffee. The rest of the family went off belt shopping, while Ben and I caught the tram into town, and wandered about, happily going to galleries and sipping Champagne. We saw some of the most amazing photography Ive ever seen, an exhibition called On The Quiet Water by Yang Yongliang. (The photos on the website do not do justice to the incredible power of his work. It is somehow at once peaceful and apocalyptic. He combines ancient and modern methods to create awe-inspiring, delicate pieces that held us enraptured as we walked around.) After a delicious day, we needed to go back to Lauras, to meet up with the family, have a small slice of the lemon cake Ben had made for me the previous day, and go out for dinner.

We walked through Flinders Street station, and at once heard the telltale sounds of a group of beatboxers and rappers, otherwise known as a cipher. We watched for a bit, and then, after a bit of nudging from me, Ben joined in, energetically adding his own beatbox sounds to the group. I stood at the side, took pictures and grinned, wishing for the millionth time that I too could magically beatbox without actually having to do the hours of practice it would take for me to be any good.

Eventually we caught the train back, and after a quick turnaround and a bit of gift giving/receiving, we walked along the road to a lovely Japanese restaurant, where we devoured miso soup and edamame, after which they brought out three of those wooden boats piled high with sushi and sashimi. It was amazing, and by the time the taxi cam to whisk us into the city I was heady with sushi delirium.

Ben had found a place called Bennetts Lane Jazz Club, at which was performing a man called Mr Percival. We hadnt heard of him before, but the descriptions on the site of his use of loop pedals and vocal dexterity attracted us. We were not disappointed. As soon as he started his set it was clear just how wonderful his voice was, smooth and effortless. He started by looping the backing to Aint No Sunshine, building it up with harmonies on top of harmonies. By the time he came in with the first line, we had been waiting in exquisite agony and so burst into applause. He continued like this, using three separate microphones and connected to three pedals, recording and playing back his voice as he leapt across the stage to manipulate the sounds. The most impressive thing, though, was that while he was doing all this, he was chatting with the audience, merrily inviting our participation and jokily making everyone feel completely relaxed. It was beautiful, but also seemed that we were witnessing myriad feats of engineering, using the technology to eliminate any need for anyone else to accompany him.

All throughout the first set, Ben and I were on the edges of our seats. Ben uses his loop pedal a lot in his work, and I love layering up vocals on my tracks, so we were both in awe of Mr Percival as he played with the pedals, and his voice, so expertly. It was no surprise then, I suppose, that in the second set, when Mr Percival was singing Superstition and asked whether anyone wanted to come and sing, I scrambled to my feet and practically bit the microphone out of his hand. Laura shouted out that it was my birthday, so after that he made a few more references to me. Later on, he decided to get a man up on stage, and selected Ben (as the Birthday Girls boyfriend), who he seated on stage and forced to sing, while Mr Percival came to where I was sitting and began dancing with me. Ben sat, eyes squeezed shut, singing, until he had clearly had enough, and started to beatbox. Mr Percivals head whipped around, and he promptly threw me aside from the ballroom pose in which he was holding me and leapt up on stage.

They did a duet for the next few songs, and the audience couldnt believe it. Ben is an amazing beatboxer, and not unused to being up on stage, so together they whipped up everyone in the room into a voice-wizardry-induced frenzy.

After the show we chatted to him, and he and Ben gazed into one anothers eyes, clearly each a bit in love with the other. I smiled, and tried to pretend that I didnt mind that Ben had totally stolen my thunder ON MY BIRTHDAY. I was secretly just really, really proud. Then we all went drinking.

It was a bloody marvellous birthday, all in all.

Actually, it was a bloody marvellous trip. I hated the flights as much as I always hate flights ("Ben, wake up. Wake up. My feet have turned into bear feet. Ive got paws! Wake up!") but other than that I loved all of it. We ate in wonderful restaurants and saw some excellent comedy (Tim Minchin, marry me). I developed an allergic reaction to guide book speak ("browse the enchanting language of the enticing tourist information pamphlets, carefully crafted by people who think youre a moron to provide you and your family with an unforgettable experience that will transform you into people trying to work out the best way to end your own lives using a copy of The Lonely Planet"). I loved spending time with Ben and his family, and I love Melbourne.

Manchester had become green in the time wed been away. Rainy, yes, but greener. Since being back I have found a nice little café job in the Craft and Design Centre, have a few gigs, including doing some Guerilla Busking this Friday. Ben and I are writing a proposal for a commission about words and music, which, if we manage to win it, would be shown at the Summer Sundae Weekender festival in Leicester. I am moving into Bens house soon, as soon as there is room for my clothes, computer and terrifying costume jewellery collection.

Australia was brilliant, but I found myself glad to be back. Manchester is becoming home now.

I have to go and lie down now, after this epic post. Oh, and also because I have a cold so I need to go and moan quietly to myself whilst trying to learn words and come up with a groundbreaking idea for a commission proposal. Sniff.

Available link for download

Avadon Is Out On Steam!

Today, Avadon: The Black Fortress goes live on Steam.

Unsurprisingly, Im pretty excited about it. After 16 years of being a tiny, invisible, basement-dwelling bottom feeder, for a few precious weeks, I get to act like Im a real developer. With a real distributor, a nice trailer video, and everything. Yes, there will be money, and thats always nice, but its the recognition Im sort of focused on now.

Writing Indie games has provided me with a very good living, and I dont have the right to complain about anything. I wrote games. I sold 8-10 thousand games a year. (Having a big back catalog is awesome.) I was content.

But then the Indie boom took off. Indie devs were getting famous. Many could make a living, and some got rich. Amazingly, people stopped acting like I wasnt a total loser for doing what I do. (This change happened about the time the word shareware disappeared.) After all these years, it was impossible to watch all of this excitement and not want to be a part of it.

And now, thanks to Valve, Im going to be visible. Im getting a shot at the spotlight. Avadon: The Black Fortress is a very good game. Its got a great story, interesting, epic battles, and a lot of cool stuff. Its simply a fun game. Will its retro old-school action take the world by storm? Maybe a lot. Maybe a little. And Ill do all I can to be content with what comes.

The Steam Thing does mean that we are embarking on a great experiment, something that we never planning on doing. But, the way the online games market is moving, something that seems like the right choice.

Avadon: The Black Fortress Is $9.99 On Steam

Ive written a lot about how I think its important to not price niche games too cheaply, and I stand by that. However, at the same time, Avadon will be only ten bucks on Steam, the cheapest weve ever made our newest game for PC/Mac. Why?

1. Steam felt it was the best price. I went into this trusting their judgment, because they know a lot more about selling Indie games than I do. When youre an Indie and Steam comes knocking, you dont say no.

2. The whole game industry is shifting. These days, a huge proportion of games online are sold for a low price without demos. People buy games on impulse, sight unseen. That way, if they dont like it they arent out a lot of money.

In these markets, charging $15 or $20 for games, like I want to, isnt feasible. Its too much money to pay for a game you arent sure about. If someone buys my game for $10 and hates it, Im a little unhappy. But $20? I dont want to take kids allowance money that way.

So Im charging $10 on Steam and for the iPad. By the standards of that market, its a hefty price, enough for me to earn my living. Its cheap enough to work as an impluse buy. It isnt the $1 or $2 price that Im still sure would put me out of business.

This means I need to adjust the prices I charge on my own web site. I have changed the price of Avadon to $20, and in the future we will very likely reduce the prices of our earlier games as well. Our next game, Avernum: Escape From the Pit will start out at $20. If this grand experiment works well, we may make future games cheaper still, though I doubt any new game on our own web site will ever go below $15.

Im expecting that some of our users who paid $25 on our site will be angry. I can totally understand this. However, all computer games get cheaper as they get older, even games that have only been to a few months. (Check out Best Buy of any other decently sized electronics store if you dont believe me.) Also, until we had access to mass-market outlets like iTunes, we were never going to generate enough sales to survive at a lower price.

I dont like making my fans angry, but, again, when Steam comes knocking, you dont say no. And our future games will be cheaper, so everyone is getting something out of it.

Now Ill sit on my edge of chair and wait to see how Avadon does. Fortunately, theres not much suspense. Were being released opposite Bastion, so hope may not be warranted at this point.

A Question a Lot of People Asked Below:

Why is the game still $20 on our web site?

Short answer: Charging this little is an experiment. I believe that Indie devs who write niche products need to charge more for their work than the more mass market, casual, $0.99 app market. The question is whether a $10 price works. If going onto Steam for ten bucks turns out to not be a good idea (or if they dont want any more of our games), we need to maintain a higher baseline price on our site.

I know this seems odd, but I assure you that it makes sense from where I sit. And, by the way, we are FAR from the only developer who does this. For example, World of Goo is $20 on their site but $10 on Steam. And they are far smarter than we are.

Available link for download

Aurore is finished !!

Yesterday I finished the 48 pages, now it´s time to do some little things to complete the book and ... it´s done! The new book will be born soon. :)

Available link for download

B is for Birthdays

Once again, Im linking up to Ben and Mes Blogging through the Alphabet.  You might like to head over there to see a post all about a Not Back to School field trip that we had the pleasure of attending with her.

Available link for download

Automating master failover is possible but needs care

I was asked from a few people about my opinion of the Githubs recent service outage. As a creator of MHA, I have lots of MySQL failover experiences.
Here are my points about failover design. Most of them duplicate with Roberts points.


- "Too Many Connections" is not a reason to start automated failover
- Do not repeat failover

I know some unsuccessful failover stories that "1. failover happens because master is unreachable (getting too many connections errors) due to heavy loads 2. failover happens again because the new master is unreachable due to heavy loads 3. failover happens again....". On database servers, newly promoted master is slower because of poor cache hit rate. On traditional active/standby environment, database cache on the new master is empty so youll suffer from 10x or even worse performance for the time being. On master/slave environment, slave has cache so performance is much better than standby server, but you cant expect better performance than master.
It does not make any sense to repeat failover within short time, and automated failover should not happen just because master is overloaded. If master is overloaded due to H/W problems (i.e. raid battery failure, disk block failure, etc), failover will need to be performed, but I think this can be manually done.

MHA does not start failover if specific error codes are returned (i.e. 1203: ER_TOO_MANY_USER_CONNECTIONS). And MHA does not repeat failover if 1. last failover failed with errors or 2. last failover happened within N minutes (480 minutes by default) ago.


- Do not failover if it is unclear master is dead

This is very important to avoid split brain. In many cases data inconsistency is more problematic than longer downtime. You need to make sure on the master that no mysqld process is running / will not run. Even though master is not reachable via TCP/IP connection attempts, mysqld may be just during crash recovery. Forcing shutdown on the mater (power off) is my favorite approach, but may take long time depending on H/W.
MHA has a helper script to kill (i.e. power off) master. When I developed MHA, I spent long time for investigating how to speed up shutting down machines.


- Prepare tools for manual failover

There are some cases that automating failover is really scary - typical example is a datacenter failure. If the whole datacenter is not reachable, it is not easy to automatically check masters status, and probably remotely shutting down master is not possible. And it would be unclear when the datacenter is recovered. In such cases I think automated failover should not be performed, but manual failover should be done. Proper alerts should be sent immediately, so that DBAs can start analyzing problems and start manual failover quickly. On master/slave environments, slaves relay log positions might be different each other. Checking all slaves status and if needed fixing consistency by parsing relay logs is painful. MHA will be helpful in such situations, and actually I have used MHA many more times for manual failover than automated failover.

Available link for download

Avernum Escape From the Pit Is Out

We have released our newest game, Avernum: Escape From the Pit, for the Macintosh. As I have written before, it is a ground-up rewrite of one of our earlier games that desperately needed it. Weve tried to put a lot of cool new graphics, design, and polish into it. A big demo is available, and the Windows and iPad versions should be out in April.

This is a rewrite of the first game I ever wrote for money, Exile: Escape From the Pit, which first came out in January of 1995. It has been fascinating to go back to my first full-length design. Id forgotten how weird and silly my work could get.

A few examples:

Huge, Sprawling World.

Skyrim has provided a fresh reminder of how much people love a huge, sprawling world full of details, cul-de-sacs, and side quests to get lost in. When I started out, I made games like that. Avernum is really, really big. Its possible to wander out into the wilds, get lost, and be eternally distracted by all the stuff you can do and dungeons you can explore. I was heavily inspired by the early Might and Magic games, some of the first games that really tried to overwhelm you with a huge world.

I love games like this. However, writing them is difficult for the obvious reason: A huge world takes a lot of work and a lot of energy. Im old now, and I dont have the limitless drive I used to. I tend now to write smaller, more focused games. Less terrain to explore, but with a more intricate story.

Three Game-Winning Quests.

I am constantly accused of never innovating, and this vexes me. I have worked hard to try new things in my RPGs and stretch the genre, and Ive been doing this from day one.

Example: Avernum doesnt have one storyline. It has three. The game has three long, arcing, game-winning quests, each of them almost entirely separate from each other. It is possible to achieve one of them, say escaping the underworld, be told you have won, pat yourself on the back, and never realize that the game still has two epic storylines remaining.

They arent three different endings. They are three different games.

I did two games this way, and Ive never seen another RPG that does the same thing. I eventually let it go to focus on more detailed single stories, but I still think it was a really cool idea.

Odd Humor.

In my spare time, I have had some success as a writer of humor. My games have always had funny elements, some more than others. Avernum contains some bits that are so weird and off the wall that I could never see myself doing now. I dont want to give precise examples, but if you play the game for more than a little youll start to see what I mean.

Years Pass. Nothing You Can Do About it.

Since 1995, my work has gotten a lot tighter, more controlled, and generally less eccentric. This has been both good and bad. Its also unavoidable. Im older and more experienced now, and that sort of fresh, unfocused enthusiasm is just not available to me anymore. I still write good games (or, at least, games that sell), but my changing tastes and increasing age have made me unable to do some things and more able to do certain new things.

For example, if you tried Avadon: The Black Fortress and didnt like it, Im sorry. That is the sort of game I write now. This will change. Five years from now, Ill do something entirely different. (I really, really want to return to open-ended non-linear games at least once before I retire.) But for now, thats it. If you hate my new games, then there is nothing I can do about that.

But, if you dont like the new stuff, I suggest trying Avernum. Its old-school, and its really neat. I hope you like it.

(And Ill post a link to this article in April when the versions for the other platforms come out.)

Available link for download