Fantasist’s Scroll

It’s almost New Year’s Eve, so I thought a link to a New Year’s Resolution Generator would be appropriate.
Yes, I coded it and popped it onto my other site. Originally, I did it to try and cheer up two special ladies who were having a rough holiday season. Honestly, I don’t know that it helped, but at least it kept my PERL CGI skills sharp and, I think, it’s a little bit of fun. And, yeah, the probabilities are weighted toward tequila drinking and kissing strangers. Hey, I’m single, it’s almost New Year’s Eve and if I can’t slant things in my favor, what’s the point of knowing a programming language at all?
Anyway, don’t take it too seriously and have a happy and safe New Year’s celebration!

At least, it kills my web pages!

This weekend I got a note from my web host telling me that they had to disable one of my CGI scripts because it was taking up too much processor time and killing the webserver. Specifically, it was the script behind my ConLang Generator. So, I had to do some modifications to it. Hopefully, I’ll maintain its usability while keeping it from killing the server again.
But, if that doesn’t do enough, I’ll have to reduce my datasets some so that fewer words are generated. We’ll see how it goes…
In the mean time, why not check out my other web page? It’s at Tales of Hoffman.

New and Improved!

Way back when I first put the ConLang Word Generator on this site, my ultimate goal was to have something that created an entire language via CGI. There were lots of tools available for making words and even languages, but they were all limited in some greater or lesser way. For instance, the very good LangMaker by Jeffery Henning, is for Windows only. Chris Pound’s Name/Vocabulary generators require going to the command line, and it helps if you know a bit of PERL, too. But, I wanted something that would crank out languages on the web. Originally, I have to admit, I was trying to figure out a way to charge for this, but it’s just too fun to keep it to myself, so it’s free.
My ConLang Generator is based on Chris Pound’s PERL scripts, but with heavy modification. My English source files come from a number of sources, but mainly from resources associated with LangMaker.

So, standing on the shoulders of giants, I have finally made a free ConLang Generator. Enjoy!

That’s Bug Eyed Monsters.

Which are, of course, the most interesting characters in the Men In Black movies. I really loved the first one, and
Men in Black II didn’t dissapoint either. It’s the same kind of raucus fun that the first movie was, but taken to a higher level. If you haven’t seen this yet, stop reading, ’cause I’m going to dish out some spoilers…
It was fun to see Tommy Lee Jones do his whole amnesiac, Postal worker bit and see Will Smith get to be the guy in the know for a change. But, still, the coolest stuff was really the CGI work and the aliens. They really are what drive this movie.
Most of the comedy is derived from human looking aliens not behaving quite like humans. And, as always, the “humans” that turn out to be aliens in disguise. My favorite, though, was Frank the Pug. First of all, pugs are cute. There, I said it and I’m not even embarassed. Pugs are, in fact, cute. A talking pug, even if it has a voice like a 50 year-old chain-smoker from Pittsburgh, is even cuter. And, as in the last movie, some of the best lines in the film were written for the dog. That had to hurt Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, but it sure was funny. And, Frank as Agent J’s partner was just a hoot to watch!
I didn’t care much for Lara Flynn Boyle’s character though. She just never seemed alien to me. In fact, she barely seemed awake most of the time. Maybe keeping up with Jack’s worn her out. Who knows…. I actually used to like her work, but now she just seems kind of pathetic.

Anyway, it’s a fun, fun movie and well worth buying on DVD, but get the
special edition with the blooper real!

Well, I’ve finally done it!

I’ve been working on this for about a year and I finally got it done. I took a script from Chris Pound’s Name Generation page and made into a CGI script. It took a little bit, but I finally worked out how to use the CGI library in PERL to the point that I could both make proper HTML tags and include the same style sheet that the rest of the site uses. So, now, even if I change the styles, the whole site will change with one file edit. Horay!
Oh, and the script, which can be found here , is pretty cool, too. Of course, I still need to add a bunch of text files for data, but I’ve got a pretty good start here already.
Have fun with it!