It may have escaped your attention that there was an eclipse this morning in parts of the northern hemisphere. This is what it was supposed to have looked like:
Impressive, huh? However, not half as impressive as the spectacle we saw in the south-east of England. Prolific crap game churner-outerer MatGubbins has sent me a type-in program which emulates exactly what happened in Kent today. I also live in Kent, and can confirm this is an accurate simulation of what happened. Scroll down to reveal the Advanced Simulator in all its glory! (I added the very first command, just to make it 100% accurate…)
1 BRIGHT 0: PAPER 7: CLS: GOTO 1
For added realism, slowly turn the brightness down a couple of notches over 10 minutes, but not too much, as it didn’t really go dark.
Also, for sound add few police car sirens that gets louder then fades, a constant bleeping (in both meanings) car alarm and a confused robin chirping his evening song.
And then shove an ice cube in each hand and hold it for 10 minutes while watching Divvy Cox and Dira O’Brein on the BBC coverage and screaming at the TV telling the cameraman to use an effing tripod to film the eclipse.
Bring back the 1999 event when I saw it all (ok, 80% coverage) in a clear beautiful blue sky in Gravesend and the poor sods in Cornwall saw bugger all. Swings and roundabouts.
Nice one Lee!
Heh was similar further north for most of it, but I’d add a RANDOMIZE USR to your program to show a tantalising glimpse of the eclipse behind thinning cloud for a few seconds at a RND time :-). It was pretty good because when you could see anything, the cloud allowed us to look directly at the sun*
Didn’t half get cold though, all that standing about didn’t help I suppose. Who’d have thought the sun would be hot?
*do not attempt this at home! Put a colander on your head or something.
Sorry couldn’t resist:
5 REM ADVANCED ECLIPSE SIMULATOR: LANCASHIRE EDITION, +3 ONLY
10 RANDOMIZE:OVER 1:BORDER 7:PAPER 7:INK 6:CLS
15 IF RND>0.95 THEN GO SUB 25
20 PAUSE 20:GOTO 15
25 CIRCLE 130,100,30:PAUSE RND*100:CIRCLE 130,100,30:RETURN
Please note this is NOT an entry (I don’t want the risk of winning best game of the year) :-p
Us poor Kentish brigade didn’t even have that…. just solid white cloud with no idea of even knowing where the sun was (I did check the morning before roughly where it should be for 9:30 ). You lucky peeps in Lancashire had a lottery win with that view.
Nice program! Does it auto run?
At 2pm the cloud broke and now with bits of blue sky here and there with a visible sun, birds cheeping and the car alarm disabled with a brick (nothing to do with me though). Not to worry, the police sirens are blasting as usual.
Sounds like something out of Urban Upstart!
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At 2pm the cloud broke and now with bits of blue sky here and there with a visible sun, birds cheeping and the car alarm disabled with a brick (nothing to do with me though). Not to worry, the police sirens are blasting as usual.
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Indeed! ^Could be the intro paragraph to the Kentish edition, and there was me thinking it was all like the Archers :-p
I can’t help but feel that Mat, the brick, and the police siren are somehow linked.
I must learn how to use PAW…
I’d just like to point out on behalf of the Kentish Tourist Board that some bits of Kent are very nice indeed – in the small village I live in, we haven’t had a brick/police siren related incident for at least three weeks.