Blood Apple live in the Brewery Bar, McKennas, Monaghan celebrating the Best Pub in Ulster award! This was broadcasted live across todayfm! Stay tuned for some more videos from The Dominican Affair.
Filmed by Dara Mc Cluskey.
I started a course in UCD last week called “Introduction to Computer Science and Programing”, or ICSP. It’s gonna be going on for three months and then I will have a big exam which I will probably fail!
The whole course centers around the use of Java, I’m not sure yet if we are going to be using anything else. We haven’t actually even started with Java yet, but we are using this program called Scratch to program our Java for us! I wouldn’t say that it is the Dream-weaver of Java, far from it. In fact I think that it is a great method of getting into Java. It has a set of preconfigured code which you can arrange into blocks, which then run – quite similar to the source of Java actually except simplified. It also eliminates the need for compiling.
Last week I went to my first “lecture” which was good enough, but I learned something valuable that day; computer hardware is not the road that I want to go down! I didn’t really enjoy the hardware aspect of the day but when it came to the Scratch lessons I was flying! For our first assignment we had to write a game in Scratch, which is essentially it’s own unique programing language. The game is called “Capture the Flag”. I was actually flat out all week and didn’t get a chance to start work on it until today, which is coincidentally the deadline for it’s completion! I spent about three hours making the game, here’s the manual and the game:
Overview
Capture the flag is a simple two player game which involves stealing the flag from the opposite colours corner.
Controls
Blue Player
Up Arrow Key = Move Up
Down Arrow Key = Move Down
Left Arrow Key = Move Left
Right Arrow Key = Move Right
Red Player
W Key = Move Up
S Key = Move Down
A Key = Move Left
D Key = Move Right
Rules
To gain a point a player must capture the opposite colour flag and return it to their base (the starting point).
If a player is in possession of a flag and his opponent touches him the flag is returned to it’s base and the player to his base.
To win a player must gain three points.
Faults
The one fault with the game is that, at least on my computer, when one player is using the keyboard to move the other player cannot move simultaneously. Although this is a fault it does also make the game a bit more interesting because the players have to fight even to move!
I think we stared advertising for this album about 3 years ago, and you may still see it spray-painted around certain parts of Monaghan Town or engraved on the footpath! Well, a few years in the making, this short, 7-track, album is finally being released by ‘The Dominican Affair’.
Readers of my blog are going to be privileged enough to get a sneak preview of the finished product before it is officially released next month. We haven’t decided if we are going to release the album for free download yet; I’m all for it but the others aren’t buying it. But I have provided 30-sec exclusive clips of all of the tracks below. The line-up is as follows; although the CD might not be in this order:
I think that there are wide variety of genres in this album, I couldn’t really hold it to any one particularly but I’m open to suggestions! We got a good deal considering what we paid for I think, and I have to give a big thanks to both Tommy Flack, who recorded the album, and Keith Corbet who mixed the album with Tommy free of charge. I am very happy with the result, although there are some things I would pay more attention to if I was to do it again! We hope to have the albums on sale in the next three weeks or so and they will be available here on my blog from that point on. Without further hesitation h, here are the tracks:
Feedback welcome! If you are interested in seeing us perform we are playing on Allison Curtis Today fm at 11pm Wednesday 21st October 2009, and we are also appearing in Whelans, Dublin on 5th December 2009.