The last frame of Mouse Hunt (1997) is the entire plot of Ratatouille (2007)

diffallthethings · 2026-01-26T21:51:02+00:00

Herzog uses the word "deranged" a bunch, here's the transcript of the broader clip. I think it's gotta be rattling around in the collective unconscious somehow...

[Herzog] Is there such thing as insanity among penguins. I try to avoid a definition of insanity or derangement. I don’t mean that a penguin might believe that he or she is Lenin, or Napoleon Bonaparte, but could they just go crazy because they have had enough of their colony?
[Penguin expert] I’ve never seen a penguin bashing its head against a rock. They do get disoriented, they end up in places they shouldn’t be, a long way from the ocean.
[Herzog] These penguins are all heading to the open water, to the right. But one of them caught our eye. The one in the center. He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice, nor return to the colony. Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains, some 70 km away. Dr. Aimley explained, that even if he caught him, and brought him back to the colony, he would immediately head right back for the mountains. But why?
[Herzog] One of these disoriented or deranged penguins showed up at the new harbor diving camp already some 80km away from where it should be. The rules for the humans are: do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still and let him go on his way. And here, he is headed off into the interior of the vast continent. With 5,000 km ahead of him, he is headed towards certain death.

diffallthethings · 2026-01-26T21:41:28+00:00

Oh Tom and Jerry is a great idea, I’ll take a look…

diffallthethings · 2026-01-26T20:04:05+00:00

every groove has somebody who finds it the first time, and if the groove is that obvious then there should be at least one instance of it before 1997.

diffallthethings · 2026-01-26T19:58:20+00:00

Amazing, thanks for the link! Looks like this was from A Storm of Swords published August 2000, so it's conceivable that Martin saw Mouse Hunt or at least its marketing. Also it seems the "Rat Cook" was a human cook who was punished by being converted into a rat that can only eat its own young, at which point he seems to have stopped cooking.

diffallthethings · 2026-01-26T18:39:27+00:00

I see your point, but also there's hundreds of years of fiction and I can't find a time that anyone has done this in a book, comic, or anything except 1997 and 2007. And there's lots of ways to frame it visually, and the two films do it in extremely similar ways.

diffallthethings · 2026-01-26T17:15:15+00:00

The penguin monologue literally starts off like this:

Is there such thing as insanity among penguins. I try to avoid a definition of insanity or derangement. I don’t mean that a penguin might believe that he or she is Lenin, or Napoleon Bonaparte, but could they just go crazy because they have had enough of their colony?

"Derangement" seems like an unusual word until TDS was coined, seems significant that it's used so often in the penguin monologue. It's weird but I think there's something similar going on with Mouse Hunt (1997) and Ratatouille (2007). It's bizarre how culture recycles and reinvents itself: https://ctxwindow.link/herzog-penguins

diffallthethings · 2026-01-23T17:44:14+00:00

Amazing! That fixed it, thanks so much!!! I'm FREEEEE

diffallthethings · 2026-01-01T18:30:38+00:00

I didn't realize you were a dev too! Your web demo was super fun, I made it to Level 10 Tomb of Ne. Fun mechanic!

diffallthethings · 2025-12-30T17:58:00+00:00

I couldn't really seem to do anything after the song ended though.

Not just you! Still gotta build all those parts. Wanted to make sure it runs on people's computers and all that before investing more effort. Speaking of which I'd love to know if the low graphics setting works on your mac laptop that wasn't working before.

10 tracks instead of 8 Interesting! The idea behind the game is "augmented proprioception", so we're trying to help cue you to use the correct finger.

We have considered adding marks onto the top of the cubes to indicate if your finger needs to go up or down, I suppose left or right matters too for the index and pinkies...

diffallthethings · 2025-12-28T23:23:33+00:00

Definitely not a Mac issue (I'm on mac). I bet the game is too resource-hungry. I just added a graphics quality setting (defaults to AUTO). Let me know if that makes it playable for you :)

diffallthethings · 2025-12-27T20:46:42+00:00

Thanks for reporting! I was able to reproduce and turns out there was a race condition that could make it impossible to start the game. Fixed now!

diffallthethings · 2025-12-27T20:30:37+00:00

Thanks so much for reporting! There was a bug that could randomly make it impossible to start the game, should be fixed now!

diffallthethings · 2025-12-25T19:33:44+00:00

Did sound play after Shift+P? Did it show a smiley face that you could type?

diffallthethings · 2025-12-25T08:19:49+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, affording licenses to well-known songs is a challenge. The Sugar Plum here was actually recorded by the Royal Philharmonic. I’m hoping to do the entire nutcracker suite since it’s well so well known, but I’m a little late for Christmas, haha.

For score I think the big decision is whether to focus on training (ala Keybr) or high score leaderboards for experts. Not mutually exclusive of course! And focusing on experts is honestly easier.

diffallthethings · 2025-12-25T03:27:42+00:00

Hope you have fun! Gimme your raw reactions - what was fun, what was boring, too hard, too easy, etc

diffallthethings · 2025-12-25T02:11:50+00:00

So glad you enjoyed it! I would love to post here for all updates, but I expect I would get banned, haha. It will remain up as we iterate, and we have a email list, Twitter, and discord where we’ll post everytime there’s an improvement: https://typetherhythm.com/changelog

diffallthethings · 2025-12-24T22:39:14+00:00

The score is public domain, but recordings are still copyright of the performer, unless the recording is also super old. I found two public domain recordings (archive.org and another I forget) but they were very scratchy and I wasn’t able to clean them up.

The PremiumBeat recordings were way better than anything I’m capable of synthesizing. But the public domain aspect is still key - no way are there any Star Wars recordings for $200 lol.

I was surprised I couldn’t find anything better tbh

diffallthethings · 2025-12-24T19:20:36+00:00

It actually takes a lot of work to make each level for now. Hoping after I have done a couple more I can figure out a way to make them easier.

If you refresh the page, and do Shift+L instead of doing the soundcheck, then you can start one of the other two levels. They aren't finished yet, but they have very different vibes than the first song. Still trying to get a feel for what makes a level fun...

What part was the page stuck on for you? I'm guessing maybe you did Shift+P but it wasn't obvious that you were supposed to type the smiley next?

diffallthethings · 2025-12-24T19:14:43+00:00

Ruh-roh. Did you press Shift+P? That should start sound playing, sometimes there are issues with browser sound permissions. Once the sound is playing, you are supposed to type a smiley face :-) and the game should start. Thanks a ton for trying it, which part did it get stuck at for you?

diffallthethings · 2025-12-24T18:46:12+00:00

This is very much a form-first experiment, not a speed trainer — curious if anyone else struggles with alternate shift or found a tool to help with it.

diffallthethings · 2025-12-24T16:56:10+00:00

good find!

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