The Hobby Corner -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This edition’s hobby corner will try to get rid of most of the prejudices that this column only contains leisure activities for a small lazy group of gløs students (the University is called Gløshaugen, often shortened to Gløs). This edition will therefore revolve around stone tough trainaholics and their violent extreme sport. Today is not the time for either sky diving, badminton, Brazilian cage- fighting or other sissy sports. The trip naturally goes to motocross on an elite level, where few hundreds of a second in front of the fastest contestant is worth striving several weeks for. “Elastomania”, or “Elma”, is the name of this type of sport, where each contestant gathers apples in the shortest amount of time and then goes to use the motorcycle in acrobatic ways and ending up on the finish line which is symbolized by (something as idiotic as) a flower. Elma is an improved version of the former “across”, but with a tad improved graphics on the apples and the motorcycles. According to professionals there is apparently also an improved sense of physics in the new version, which has led most people to pass on to it. readme met two on Norway’s best players, Jarle Kvåle and Svein Rune Saxrud. Both hide their names when they are driving the bike, with Jalli and SveinR respectively. Jarle has at the time of writing two world records (completed a level in the shortest amount of time), and SveinR is hard at work to get one. Jarle himself believes that the reason he has the record on two levels is that he has such a good control over “pipes”, and as a cause of this he is nicknamed “pipeking” in the elma scene. To drive pipes means to squeeze the bike through tight passages which occurs in the levels due to a polygon error in the drawing algorithm of elma’s map editor. These kinds of exploitments of the game’s apparently unfinished code are abundant, and SveinR tells of his improvements of his personal records by the aid of “alovolt”. A sort of bug which occurs by pressing the throttle and brake pedal at the same time (usually the right and left button on a keyboard). If you use this jedi trick correctly you can make the bike bounce to new heights. By professionals it is called bounce-bug-exploit. Kuski of the month Dear child has many names. Also in elma. Apparently eccentric child also has many names. Kuski is one of them, and both SveinR and Jalli have received the honorary title “Kuski of the month” by the website www.moposite.com, which also keeps up- to-date information on the fresh world records of the day, picture galleries and a lot of answers to questions regularly asked by kuskis. Here you can also find lists over long interviews with each of the best kuskis, and here you can also find both our crossers from NTNU (the university). Motorcycle meetings It cannot really be said of this sport that the number of contestants are constantly increasing, but occasionally the regular motorcrossers meet to compete over the hundreds. The last meeting was in Finland, and together with his team, Team ICE, Jalli packed his equipment and took a trip to the country with the thousand seas. Here, 25 eager kuskis from around Scandinavia were gathered in a rented cottage deep in the green forests where you are guaranteed total isolation from everything that can be called human. Hardware-tweaks I spent a long time thinking if the reason these two guys were playing elastomania was because their computers were too weak for World of Warcraft, and as soon as this slipped out of me the mood in the room quickly heated. Jalli tells that this is not the case at all and that he has set his system perfectly up for elma. The monitor is of course a CRT-edition because todays’ LCD monitors have a way too long delay in its picture update. In addition to that, vsync has to be on, so that the monitor is updated a little bit quicker. He adds some stuff about opengl but I can’t comprehend any of it anyway, so I bid thanks for the interview and get on. [The grades for this type of sport starts (and ends) on the next page.] New friends Do you like moving across several country borders at a time with full equipment in a trailer behind the car? And maybe also meet someone who shares the same fondness in the 10*10 pixel motorcycle as yourself, then this is definitely something for you! If not, we suggest a trip to the city or whatever else you do to enjoy life. Grade: 6/6 or 0/6. Equipment factor Elastomania demands less graphics and processing power than the thin clients at P- 15 (a computer-related building at the university), so after a couple of years on Gløshaugen you should in a MacGyver manner manage to make a PC that can run this game without problems. The next step is porting this to your cell phone! Something to think about for a future masters assignment. Four points for theoretically being able to play this game on your TV’s remote. Grade: 4/6 Cheating possibilities Because of the game’s simple code it’s not difficult to make programs which can get you respect in the elma scene (unless you get caught) by making a world record in each and every level. This was done by the kuski “DarMoeD” when he made 56 world records and took the victory in World Cup #4. (Though he was burned, hanged and put on the shitlist for life after he got busted) Grade: 6/6 Time waster factor Complete all Elastomania’s levels in the shortest amount of time. You’ve got three weeks to send in your best replay. The whole world is in on the competition. And of course we include hundreds and thousands in the consideration. No more words. Grade: 6/6 Dating possibilities Will professional handling of the motorcycle get you the dream girl (or, who the sauna boys might prefer, the dream boy)? We don’t know the general situation, but readme’s girl minority was not convinced. The editor Ole Marius, on the other hand, would love to take a cozy sauna with the boys. Grade: 3/6 In total Even though it looks very promising for this hobby for now, you get tired of driving a motorcycle and collecting apples extremely quickly. This does not keep up in the long run for a gløs student who loves the variation for instance a maths exercise has to offer. But if you are an extreme sport athlete you might get something out of it as well. Grade: 3/6 Image texts: Image of the bike: Here you can see Jalli striving to get all the apples. After-sauna image: Elastomania crossers asocial? Think again! Here after a sauna session during the last Finnish meeting. Team ICE image: The world’s three leading motorcrossers: Cloud, Jalli and TorInge. All from Team ICE.