Hall of Miscellanea

• Predator-style countdown [GIF, 125k] and binary clock [GIF, 138k] with a Predator-inspired readout (being built at the request of Scott Flanagan, who came up with the idea and layout).
  

• Tribes 2 maps that I've made.
  
  
• Metroid-shaped jello desserts.
  
  
• A quick guide to Getting Started with Scorch 2000, a clone of the DOS game "Scorched Earth".
  
  
• The ArdReil project (a clone of the old DOS game "anacreon"), which I am assisting with the development of.
  

• Fun with high-order Mandelbrot and Julia sets.
  

• My cat-scaring slippers [JPG, 22k].
  
  
• Transcript of that "Solid Snake Loses the Keys to the Metal Gear" audio file that was spreading across the 'net a while back. MP3 version seems to have vanished. www.newgrounds.com has a bad flash version of it.
  
  
• A log of what happens when Nerf meets Tribes 2 on FurryMUCK.
  

• Version 2.1 of the mapper was a prototype. It did a decent job of mapping the region near West Corner of the Park, but suffered terribly from aliasing problems (rooms with the same name confused it).
  

• This project has been on hold for several years now.
  
  I may finish the stilts someday, but it could be next year or next decade.
  
  
  
• These stilts are dangerous!
  
  If you lose your balance, you can hop off of normal stilts and land easily. You can't hop out of these! You'll be stuck trying to do a break-fall from a foot and a half higher than normal, moving a lot faster than normal when you hit. When I tried the stilts out, I had two spotters helping me (one holding each arm). When I took the photo, I had one spotter and a walking stick. Take proper precautions, and wear football gear if you're going to parade around in these things for any length of time (even with spotters).
  
  
  
• Design principles:
  
  The principle of the design is to add bungee-cord "tendons" to make the bent-legs position the "neutral position" (position your legs move into when you aren't putting any force on them). This means these stilts should actually be comfortable to move around in when finished (unlike most digitigrade designs). Right now, I'm only compensating the ankle joints, so my knees and butt muscles hurt quite a bit after a few minutes standing in the stilts. I'll have a version that compensates all leg joints Some Day.
  
  As-is, bending your legs much from the neutral position requires substantial force, and when you lift your legs up, the neutral position changes. The second problem can be fixed by using a loop of rope instead of a bungee cord (as in the photo below), but solving the first problem would require building strange contraptions that behaved as springs with a nonlinear response curve (if you're not into physics, this means "bloody wierd"). I have a good handle on how to solve this; I'm just probably not going to get around to it any time soon.
  
  
  
• About the harness:
  
  I've recently added a rope harness to the stilts to compensate for some of the stresses higher in the leg. The simple harness shown below was just supposed to hold the loops of the achilles tendon cord to keep them from sliding off my legs - but it turns out that this setup actually compensates for most of the other forces that made walking painful. You could walk relatively comfortably in the revised version of the stilts (it feels like you're carrying weights on a yoke while walking with your knees slightly bent). You'd still better be wearing football gear, though.
  
  A central horizontal piece of rope goes behind your lower back to pull the cords back to be in line with your body. Two cords go down, one to each leg loop. Two loops go up, one over each shoulder, like a backpack. The only discomfort I felt was from the rope pressing into my legs (didn't use padding for this test).
  
  
  
• Do what you like with this design; just take proper safety precautions.
  

• Me standing in the stilts with the new harness:
  image [JPG, 46k]
  
  
• Me standing in the stilts:
  image [JPG, 39k]
  

• Profile of the stilts:
  image [JPG, 78k]
  
  
• Detail of the top of the stilt:
  image [JPG, 85k]
  
  
• Detail of the bottom of the stilt:
  image [JPG, 73k]
  
  
• Slightly closer view of the harness:
  image [JPG, 44k]
  

• Battle simulator Perl script, v1.0.0:
  
  anacreon-combat.pl [4.7k]
  

• Folding instructions for the four traditional origami bases (that I know of):
  
  image [JPG, 112k]
  
  
• Folding instructions for the origami Pierson's Puppeteer. Yes, I came up with this myself. Yes, I have too much time on my hands:
  
  image [JPG, 83k]
  

• Method works surprisingly well.
  
• Use a fresh pair of socks.
  
• Put a few sheets of paper or a towel or something on the floor, then a big textbook/dictionary/etc, then your mousepad. You don't want floor crud on the mousepad, you need something solid under the pad, and you don't want floor crud on the book either.
  
• Rest the ball of your foot on the highest part of the mouse (right before the buttons), and bring your foot back almost under your chair. This gives you the best angle on the buttons.
  
• Two-button mice work acceptably. A three-button mouse would probably be hard to handle properly (didn't test one).