coding

The Admin of I/O (Wizard of Oz Parody)

JoeRover Side Quests , , , , , , , , ,

Here we go again, folks, another parody. This time it’s The Wizard of Oz.

After clicking on a bad link, Dot and her virtual companion, Pixels, woke in a strange land filled with strange people.

“Pixels, I don’t think we’re on our LAN anymore,” Dot said upon seeing the Binaries, a race of people where some were over 6-feet tall and some were about 4-feet tall.

The Binaries were eternally grateful to Dot for killing the evil Lord of Memes, even if it was by accident. Upon her arrival, she’d smushed the man, ironically, by dropping a TrentTroll meme video on him. When Dot looked at the body, it derezzed into a pile of pixel blocks leaving only his UltraCorp haptic gear. To thank Dot, the Binaries gave Dot the haptic suit. After putting on the gloves, vest, and goggles, a bright light appeared among the group. It belonged to Jessie the Good Coder. Years ago Jessie left UltraCorp in order to become an independent program designer.

Jessie told Dot that if she wanted to return home she would have to speak with the Awesome Admin of I/O. “All you have to do is follow the blue secure hyperlink,” Jessie said pointing to the blue, paved road.

After a brief song that we can’t go into here because of copyright reasons, Dot thanked the coder and the Binaries and began her journey. Along the way, she met the Influencer. He believed that if he could only understand the algorithm his content could go viral. Dot suggested that he come with her to meet the Admin.

Soon Dot and her friends arrived in the Glitch Forest, home of all the bugs and glitches found in cyberspace. Some of the glitch trees attacked Dot, Pixels, and the Influencer. Thankfully, they were rescued by Bot-X1, a bot once used by UltraCorp to promote product and make the company seem more popular than they really were. Bot-X1 was shelved after people continually outed him as a bot. Bot-X1 believed if he could only get an emotion core he could appear more human-like. Once again Dot, suggested joining her, Pixels, and the Influencer on their journey to meet the Admin.

Unfortunately, this is when the Crooked Coder for Corporations appeared. She would stop at nothing to get the haptic gear that once belonged to the Lord of Memes. With the much more advanced system, her coding powers would be unstoppable. Fortunately, our heroes managed to escape, but they soon found themselves in the Dark Web Forest.

“We must be careful,” warned the Influencer. “The Dark Web is filled with scammers and hackers.”

“And trolls,” Bot-X1 added.

“Scammers and hackers and trolls, oh my,” said Dot.

As the friends ventured more into the forest, the darker it got. They then heard a noise. Someone was following them. A figure jumped out in front of them. It was the Honest Insurance Salesman. He’d been trying for years to get his business off the ground; but for some odd reason, people found him untrustworthy.

“If only I had a verification certificate then people would know I’m not a scammer,” said the Salesman.

Dot, the Influencer, and Bot-X1 were a little skeptical about letting an insurance salesman join them–especially one found in the Dark Web; but after he preformed a heartfelt song, Dot decided that he should be given a chance; she invited him to join their quest to meet the Admin.

Finally, the heroes exited the forest and found themselves only a few miles from Cloud Storage City. Their arrival, however, didn’t go unnoticed. The Crooked Coder, using her malware spy program, watched as the heroes approached the city. She knew if she didn’t do something soon, they would be out of reach. She reached out and infected the fields around the city with pop-up ads. The pop-up ads slowed the progress of the heroes as they fought the onslaught of annoying ads. Luckily, Jessie was also watching the progress of the heroes and sent a pop-up blocker.

With the pop-ups gone, the heroes entered the city where they finally met the Admin. The mystical floating head told them he could only return them once they brought him the CPU of the Crooked Coder. The heroes were not happy about this news but continued on their quest.

Not long after leaving the city, the Crooked Coder sent her viruses to capture the heroes. They were brought before the Crooked Coder. When Dot refused to give her the haptic gear, she threatened to hack into the Influencer’s account and post scandalous videos that would get the Influencer “canceled.”

“Don’t do it!” cried her three friends.

“She’ll be too powerful!” said the Influencer.

“Quiet you!” said the Coder. She then infected the Influencer. He started to fade away.

Seeing the only thing nearby was a bucket of comments, Dot threw it towards the Influencer. She’d hope that the comments would strengthen him. She believed that the comments were friendly ones, full of well-wishes and praise, but they were in fact the comments that sprang from haters. Thankfully, Dot missed and got the Crooked Coder instead. She was doused in hate comments.

“NO!” cried the Coder. “What a realm! What a realm that my malicious acts be undone by those more negative than me!” The Coder collapsed into a series of pixels.

Dot and friends returned to Cloud Storage City with the CPU. Unfortunately, the Crooked Coder’s CPU was incompatible with the Admin’s system and therefore useless. It looked like all hope was lost. They would never get what they wanted. But Dot gave an inspirational speech to her friends telling them how valued they were not for the number of followers they had but for who they were. She told them they were true and honest friends. It then got better as the Admin informed the Influencer that he could give him the secrets of the algorithm. He also could give Bot-X1 emotion programing. Finally, the Salesman got his verification. But, he could not return Dot to her home.

At this point, Pixels turned on the Admin’s facecam and revealed that he was really a human with a light pink shirt, acid-wash jeans, and a mullet. Turned out he was a programmer from the 1980s. He got stuck here after some bad coding.

With things looking really bleak, Jessie the Good Coder returned. She informed Dot that she could have left anytime. She just needed to log out of the haptic system.

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” said Dot.

“If I had done that then you wouldn’t have this story to post to social media.”

“It’s kinda long for Birdsong,” said Dot.

“Then put it on a blog,” Jessie said in an annoyed “duh” voice. She cleared her throat and became sweet again. “You just need to say the password: there’s no place like homepage.”

“Will I ever see you again?” asked Dot.

“Sure. If you remember to follow us and leave a review on YIP.”

“Wait a minute. Was all of this a simulation?”

“No time for that now. Say the password.”

“There’s no place like homepage,” said Dot. “There’s no place like homepage.”

Until the next wormhole…thanks for reading!

100 Blog Followers Special!

JoeRover Odds and Ends , , , , , , , , ,

I noticed a few days ago that I reached 100 followers for my blog. To celebrate, I made an illustration of Joe/Dogboy’s online avatar, Warrior Fang, and his dog’s online avatar (it’s the future; intelligent animals can get online too), Silent Paw, battling a swarm of coding bugs.

Enjoy, and as always…thanks for reading.

Coding Hero | Dogboy Reborn Side Quest

JoeRover Dogboy Reborn, Side Quests , , , , , , , ,

Thanks to Brain’s contacts, he was able to get me a freelance job as a coder/tester for the Ultra Gaming Network. They were having trouble with their latest update.

“Please don’t ruin this with your usual hijinks,” Brain said.

“What hijinks?” I asked.

Brain crossed his arms. “What about two weeks ago when you destroyed a third of the Pineapple Inc. office building when you were helping them perfect their virtual theater software?”

“In my defense, Terabyte was trying to use the system to drain the minds of every person who watched the new Jason Chain movie.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Pfft. I gave up trying to figure out his motives a long time ago.” I stroked my chin for a moment. “However, the movie has been trending since the attack…”

***

The job was pretty slow going. There was a lot of code to sift through. No one could figure out why the game kept freezing anytime someone bought a bonus chest. Needless to say, Ultra Gaming Network was getting tired of irritated customers calling all day.

I removed my glasses and pinched my nose. My eyes were starting to feel like they were on fire.

Tick-tock, went the clock. Tick-tock.

Swipe, swipe, boop. Someone was sliding code blocks around either moving them to a separate area for testing or deleting them.

Tap, tap. Click, click. Tap, tap. Click, click. Another worker was busy adding new code blocks and setting up variables. A nearby phone went ba-ring!

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Ba-ring. Ba-ring. Swipe, swipe, boop. Tick-tock. Tap, tap, click, click. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Swipe, swipe, boop. Clack. Click. Clack, clack, click. Ba-ring. Ba-ring.

I started nodding my head to the various office noises.

Ba-ring. Tick-tock. Yawn. Scratch-scratch. Ba-ring. Ba-ring. Swipe, swipe, boop.

First, I started to hum along; then, I started to sing along:

Bytes and bits are in my head.

I need a doctor, put me to bed.

Pixels invade my waking space.

Get out! Get out of my face.

I don’t wanna be a one or zero. 

I don’t need to be a coding hero.

Slowly everyone turned towards me. One by one they started to bob their heads to the music.

Nodes and macros how do ya keep it straight?

Add a semicolon to keep it all right.

Push and pull make my eyes droop.

These functions got me in a loop.

One worker stood. The place went quiet for a moment. She then sang out:

I don’t wanna be a one or zero. 

I don’t need to be a coding hero.

Another quick round of silence reverberated through the office before a group joined in with a slow, almost operatic:

Fighting bugs is quite a drain.

If we see one more X then we’ll go insane.

Finally, all the workers sang out:

We don’t wanna be a one or zero. 

We don’t need to be a coding hero.

Everyone then moved into a line and began to slide, clap, and shrug their shoulders as I continued:

Our eyes are dry; our fingers crack.

This pain in our neck won’t go away.

Binomials on the attack.

And bugs hold their sway.

We’re simply out of luck!

Everyone:

We don’t wanna be a one or zero. 

We don’t need to be a coding hero.

Me:

Blink your eyes and it’s all gone.

You’re obsolete, you’re time is done.

All that training is over now.

Someone added blocks, oh wow!

Best catch up or be left in dust;

Is this C Plus or just some rust?

Everyone:

We don’t wanna be a one or zero. 

We don’t need to be a coding hero.

Out of nowhere a voice rang out, “ENOUGH!” We stopped with our arms still in the air. It seemed as if even the clock stopped. The boss glared us down. “How dare you?!” she said tapping her foot. She faced each of us, her eyes piecing and fierce. “How dare you do a musical number and not be recording it for MyVideo? Now, let’s do this right, people!”

Everyone–once the recording equipment was set up–sang in a cheerful, end-of-musical-tone:

We’re gonna do this right!

This game is out of sight!

Even though it causes strife,

Coding is our birth, our life.

We don’t need to be a one or zero.

Because we’re all a coding hero.

Alone (eBook only) is on sale for $0.99 until Sept. 3, 2019. Buy now and join in the urban fantasy adventure.

Until the next wormhole…thanks for reading!

Copyright © 2019 Joe Rover

Dogboy and related characters Copyright © 2016-Present by Joe Rover

All rights reserved. No part of this post may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or as a repost/share with link to the original post.

All characters, organizations, and locations in this post have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. Any resemblance to individuals known or unknown to the author are purely coincidental.

Infinity Train Episodes 3-4 (Spoilers and Theories)

JoeRover Reviews, theories , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s the complete playlist: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Infinity Train is a (as of now) mini-series airing on Cartoon Network from Aug. 5-9. For now, it is ten 11 minute episodes. Each night two episodes will air. The show is also available on the Cartoon Network app.

The third episode started out a little confusing. In the previous episode, Tulip is scared by the number on her hand dropping; she believes it means she’ll die. In the third episode, she is actively trying to cause the number to change. It made me feel like there was a missing episode.

The number, however, does not change. Tulip rushes through each car telling everyone she has no time to stop. Finally, she enters the Corgi Car where she is forced to stop because a monster is blocking the exit. During her stay, she learns to slow down and be patient–the answers will eventually come. Once again, once she learns her lesson, the number changes. But, there is more to the episode.

The monster, at first, is a spider who’s shadow is distorted by a glowing orb. Soon they discover that a metal, robotic creature is taking the orbs from sections of the train car. It is shown that the sunny day scene of the car is just a hologram. Also everything in the car, from sunlight to the water, is controlled by the orbs. The “metal spider” seems to be repairing the train by taking out the orbs but doesn’t replace them. The creature is also seen to glitch. It seems obvious that the machine is broken or has a bug.

The creature then notices Tulip and screams, “Take your seat!” before retreating. Sounds like something a ticket taker, or a conductor, would say. Maybe the conductor is faulty and needs someone who likes to program–like Tulip–to fix it.

In the fourth episode, Tulip once again can’t force the “hand number” to change. She states that she has tried everything logical, but it doesn’t work. She is upset at how illogical the train seems to be. In the Crystal Car, she has to sing a song that matters to her before she can leave. It isn’t until she sings a song from her family road trips that she succeeds. The number then drops again.

It seems as if the train is teaching her to open her heart. It seems like she has walled off her feelings, because of her parents’ divorce, and built a barrier of science to block her emotions. I also found it interesting how the number drop seems to correlate to the “importance” or “success” of the lesson. When she yells at One-One, it goes down by one. When she sings the song, it drops by more.

I’m getting this sense that the train, and the world outside the train, is broken. Just like how Tulip probably feels about her family. It isn’t her love of science that frees her from the Crystal Car but her love of her family. The metal spider also seems to be broken. My theory is Tulip needs to fix it and heal herself from what is happening with her family.

I find it interesting that the creatures Tulip encounters seem to know they are on the train but have no interest in leaving it or their cars. None of the other “passengers” seem to have numbers on their hands or paws. Tulip seems to be the only human onboard. The only other passenger that seems to travel the cars is the cat, a con artist.

What are your theories? Is the metal spider the conductor? Why is Tulip the only one with a number? Are all the cars holograms/programs?

And what do you think of the show so far? Good, bad, meh?

Until the next wormhole…thanks for reading.

If you’re interested in more reviews, theories, stories, and more, don’t forget to follow and turn on notifications. Or you can check out more of my posts in the archives.