Evil Overlord 101

Monday, January 21, 2008

And now for something completely different. My son got me a game for the Xbox 360 called Overlord, the game puts the fantasy genre on its head by putting you in the role of the evil Overlord leading your army of minions to world domination. Overall a fun game that fulfills a long standing ambition of mine that my wife is continually, and successfully, thwarting. I was searching for some tips for this game when I stumbled across this site, How To Be A Successful Evil Overlord. However instead of tips for the game, it has 100 tips on avoiding the classic blunders an evil Overlord can make.

As a software developer or member of an IT staff you never know what sort of project you will be undertaking so I've extracted the IT related tips for those of you who might end up working for Hank Scorpio.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: This also applies to passwords.

65. If I must have a computer system with publicly available terminals, the maps they display will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

99. Any data files of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb.

100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free, unlimited internet access.

I would recommend reading the full list if you are thinking of making a career change from software developer to evil Overlord to avoid the mistakes of your predecessors. I particularly enjoyed this non-IT related one:

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 4:01 PM | Categories: Other | Permalink |

Discover your inner Simpson

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

A non-technical post for a change of pace even though we aren't supposed to blog about this sort of thing, Jon our editor wields his editorial power with an iron fist (albeit while holding a donut), but there is something about the Simpsons that appeals to technical folks everywhere.

One of my favorite episodes (and hey Jon this is computer related at least!) is when Homer puts on a few pounds to be obese so he can stop going to work because he's disabled. They install a computer at his home which of course he knows nothing about, the best moment from the episode being:

Homer (reading from PC screen): "To start press any key"; where's the any key? Is see esk (ESC), keturl (CTRL) and pigup (PgUp) but there doesn't seem to be any any key... Phew, all this computer hacking is making me thirsty, I think I'll order a tab. *presses TAB key, whilst holding up cup to CD Drive... Computer springs to life*

Anyways, in conjunction with the movie there is a site at www.simpsonizeme.com where you can upload a photograph of yourself and they send you back an e-mail with a simpsonized version of you. Here is my inner Simpson, quite the dapper fellow I must say.

Jon, can I use this as my dev2dev blog photo? <g>

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 12:43 AM | Categories: Other | Permalink |