It Takes A Computer To Make A Computer Game

Femi Adekele had a problem on his hands. He had a brilliant idea for a computer game, but he had no computer.

In support of downtrodden pigs

At least that's the excuse he gave to the gardai when they nabbed him for stealing computers and related equipment from Dublin City University.

At the time of the burglary, Mr. Adekele was a student there, so you'd expect that he would have access to the computers that he tried to steal. The purpose of the computer lab is to give students access to computers so they have what they need to complete their studies. All the student needs to add is a flash drive on which to store their work so they can keep what they've done until they come back to fine tune the code.

That, apparently, was insufficient for Mr. Adekele. He had to have the computers in his possession.

From there, you'd have to assume that Mr. Adekele and his assistant consumed a few alcoholic beverages because their caper smacks of drunken antics.

The perpetrator entered the premises, armed with tools to remove the equipment. They filled a couple of shopping bags with Apple products (still the best graphics and beloved by graphic artists) but that sort of work done by a non-professional tends to generate noise. A security guard caught them, and the pair of thieves thought it best to make their escape.

The escape route was a window which, unfortunately, was not on the ground floor. Mr. Adekele broke his leg in the fall, and his trustworthy companion hid him in the shrubbery until the heat died down. It only went further downhill from there.

It took twelve hours for the assistant to locate a means of transporting a man with a broken leg, and as bad luck would have it, the only item available was a wheelbarrow.

Unless you're Molly Malone, a barrow being pushed around Dublin is instantly suspicious, especially when the contents are not mussels and cockles but a Nigerian man in some pain. Gardai stopped them and then the story came out.

The purported story, that is. In court, Mr. Adekele's counsel offered up the "computer game inventor" theory, in which his client intended to make his fortune in a game that competed with Angry Birds. To be called Angry Pigs. Retribution from the unfortunate victims of the original app; the pigs strike back, and Mr. Adekele would be rich, rich, rich.

He's pleaded guilty and will await his sentence while his broken limb heals. There'll be no healing of his pride, however. That's damaged beyond all hope of repair.