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Another project

This coding project is a long going project that I’ve been working on from time to time in the few spare hours I’ve had, and now it’s my top side-home-coding-project. I’ve been studying the general problem, and I think it’s finally in a stable enough form that it can start into real development. There’s still a ton of back-end work just to prove it out.

I’m adding light blog articles on that site just to keep people up with what’s going on over there, if anyone cares.


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This continues Book I of my epic, The Ulangar, which was written between 1991 and 1996. Over the years, the original letters were lost between text file format changes. I’ve done my best to keep the originals by comparing the files against the last printed versions I have.

The flaming moon ascended to the Stars
carrying with it the essence of Ra’s sacred Light
which reflected into the eyes of two companions
one man one woman
with weapons clutched in their fists
The flat stone around they dug
moving points of scorched earth glistening in the dark
The man of the party when the glass was turned
chanted a song of an ancient rhyme
causing basal memories to be aroused in men
And the moon climbed higher
that crafty glinting moon ever watching
how beautiful in origin yet malign in manifestation
Time raced by as would a starving eagle in pursuit of prey
the victim would fall upon the ground
and fail to dodge the searing talons
grasping at its throat
eating its liver again and again
A bolt of blue burst from the yellow clouds
and descended upon the earthen gravel
and enveloped the mighty rock
O shimmering rune covered stone
how thy weight doth disguise thy purpose
Up the black monolith rose into the sky
as mist falls from the moistened mud
Into the clouds it rose
far away from the meddlings of men
opening a vast hole on the plane
painted in the darkest hue
with shape undreamed in Elucid’s word
Now did smells and sounds of the darkness rise to the earth
moving those not feeling blind
The none let go the dying ground
and buried their bodies into the soot
Endless journey to the Gate
unlocked with Silver Key
Both were neither here nor there
yet they floated with wind in their glory
trembling in the Cold
bundled about them
touching them like no other had
lovers are like strangers to the Cold and None
The woman did open her gems to black
and saw before her a gigantic gate
double doors made of precious stuff
lapis lazuli and jasper and open
revealing a floor of silver and gold
below mysteries unnamed and yet unsolved
The air contained remnants of
a presence of jasmine and rose
She also saw a great phantasm
clicking in the dark
scratching in the night
the Shadows hid in fear of the gate
not one fell upon it to hinder the Gate’s glory
as a beacon refuses to be slain by the rolling fog
The magléd face of Man did weep
His gems did view the Great Gate too
the Gate as his mind did view it
A Shadow moved out from the walls
cautious of each minute movement
avoiding e’r that monstrous lip
The None did perceive the Demon to speak
though no mouth was present upon his vaporous form
``Greetings to thee fair travelers from abroad
seekers of knowledge banned by thy Lords
There is only one way to leave this place
and he who possesses it is Knowledge
Thou may leave the grand city
whenever thou dost wish
But lest thou hast that sacred Knowledge
thou hast better follow me’‘
So thought the Terrible Shapeless One
and the darkness proceeded into the city
Woman with eyes Open did perceive
a sign on the brilliant Gate
and laughed to herself with Wisdom
and Man shook and trembled away from his Gate
weeping into the palace
Upon their entrance into the Blasted Tower
decorated with burning men and impaled bodies
twitching in their eternal life
Darkness did mutter ``Soon we shall pass
the Chamber of Doors
guarded by the Silent One
He sits in a corner with pleas for help
and screams of agony unceasing
The blacken’d walls with chis’léd windows
of faces twisted in endured anticipation
this his only sight
Rotting corpses and stale vomit
this his only odor
A knotted throne
this his only seat’‘
Indeed the Silent One did sit alone
in the corner of the circular room
three thousand meters in diameter
and a doméd ceiling half that distance
A white ring was before him and behind him
ten and three meters arc
A window next to the chair was mumbling
``The Tale The Tale
Tell me The Tale
The Tale The Tale’‘
and he sat without word or movement
The Shadow moved to a door on the wall
and led the pair to a sign a pact
and the window whispered ``The Tale The Tale’‘
and Lamaraz shifted his head
and the door did close
and the Silent One opened his maw
to begin a story


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ARGUMENT: This is the Book of Origins, where all things begin and all things meet their opposites.

Death and War I dream
of the Stars and Spirits of night
with brilliance high within
high without
And of Ulangar
the god-child who shaped mankind
the mortal who warred against the
hated One of man and beast

Oh Muse of my inner eye
under the brow of thy heavy foot
wilt thou not offer thy gift
illuminate my senses
Let me clutch that vision in my hand
to cultivate and bloom into words
still remembering that Vision of beauty
how glorious in answer
Allow my ears to hear thy kisses
let me grasp thy voice in my deepest mind
lest I loose it to the rampant winds of time
Beget my ideas and nurse them to manhood
else the whole will be for naught
Touch these weary hands and let them live
how grand the voice to give such vibrance
Exalted by thine name oh my Muse
without whom the sages lose wisdom
hounds are deaf and kings are beggars
Only thy words matter in this shriv’led
life so naked before thy touch
Envelop us in thy cloak and staves
one stave of joy one stave of sadness
for what means this dust without you
The answer lies beyond my reach
how your grasp as kept me tight
eliminating my fears and woes
Life is everything with thee
and nothing
without thee


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This is a reprint of The Ulangar which I posted on my short lived blog. This time, I’ll finish up writing all 5 books and the accompanying notes for the following chapters.

This is the epic that I started back in 1991 under the pen name “Viktur Conan Slayson”. It’s one of those works that took me the better part of 6 years to write, then I essentially abandoned it when my time suddenly disappeared due to work. When I went back to it, I realized that I had become a different person than the one who started working on it. As such, I don’t feel that I can properly finish it.

This beast went through an uncountable number of revisions. It started as a dream, I wrote that down as a five page sketch for a story, then started writing it out as a story board for a movie, then switched over to the poetic epic after I started studying different ones. I invented a poetic form, created parts of a musical score for it, half created a language, wrote a copy paper box full of notes, and there’s even some parts that are good. It was intended to have a 10 book structure, with an eleventh book addendum; I completed up to book 4 and the beginning of 5, and have notes for the rest of it.

The introduction to the work, which I won’t post here, was the poem from Horace’s Odes, Book III, 30.


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My first short film is up now at YouTube. It’s 27 minutes long, so it’s a bit longer than your average half hour tv show.

This was an experiment with a pseudo exquisite corpse technique, but with each person writing a line of dialog (there was a bit of editing at the end to strip out 3 lines that didn’t go anywhere, more so than the rest). I find it interesting how a 3 act structure formed out of it.

It was an interesting project, in that I learned a whole lot about what it takes to put a film together. Being animated, it had its own set of interesting issues that live action doesn’t have, and vice versa. At some point, I’ll put together a description of how I put the thing together.


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I finished working on a “stutter” patch for LMMS, and posted it to the mailing list. This allows for the audio file to remember the last played position when starting a new note. This means that it’s now easy to move along notes during the playback, along with other nifty features.

This tarball can be dropped into either the “stable-0.4” GIT branch, or the 0.4.15 source code from the Sourceforge project site.

stutter_fixed.tar.bz2 [10.9 kB]

The GIT patch off of “stable-0.4” is here:
stutter_fixed.stable-0.4.patch.bz2 [4.4 kB]

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