  me gently ushers you | 
Posted - 6/25/2008 5:57:57 PM | I am gently ushering you to this thread to post comments. And try to keep it serious. While a link to "fifty haikus about boobies" might be fun, we're looking for articles that you found particularly relevant.
And don't suck up to me by posting a link to one of my reviews. They're completely useless in this context.
You can win some books. Cool books. And a pony.
note: not really a pony.
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| Memory and my personal conspiracy theory | |
Posted - 6/23/2008 10:35:09 AM | Dang, memory has gotten cheap. It's gotten cheap both in the physical sense (I just upped my laptop to the max memory it'll support for $44), and in the metaphorical sense. People just don't think about how much memory things require anymore.
I remember the old 386MAX/QEMM days. Those were apps that would cleverly stuff things like drivers and TSR's in areas of memory that MS-DOS wasn't normally able to access, thus giving you more free space for your app. And sometimes if you really tweaked it you could get 50 or 60k extra space for your app.
Last week I popped up Shelly's task-manager to see how much space Civil3D 2009 (with a big drawing loaded) was occupying. 650 meg. That's a thousand times the typical amount of memory that computers had in the olden MS-DOS days, and ten thousand times what the old TRS-80's and Apple II's typically had.
But now I really don't care. I was a bit taken aback last week when I discovered that Digsby on my machine required ten times as much memory as the program it replaced (Trillian=6 meg, Digsby=65 meg) despite it being only a little bit nicer than Trillian. I seriously considered reclaiming my memory and downgrading, but then I realized that Digsby had been running on my machine for several weeks without me even noticing that it was a giant hog.
I'm now starting to think that Civil3D is downright lean. After all, it's only ten times the memory footprint of an IM client :)
And here's my personal conspiracy theory. It's about MS Silverlight, which is Microsoft's browser-plugin that's been pimped as a Flash competitor. I'm now thinking that it's not a Flash competitor and that it has actually been created for a single purpose.
Silverlight was created as a way to run .NET content as a web plugin. That is to say that it was created to run CLR content as a web plugin. And that is to say that it was created to run Managed C++ as a web plugin.
That means that, unlike other plugin technologies, you could take a large existing codebase written in C++ and get it working (with heavy modifications to the UI and File system layer, hopefully abstracted out) as something stream-able to a web plugin so it could be run anywhere.
Something like. . .Microsoft Office!
Apps like Google Docs are pretty cool, but at best they're about 1/3 of MS Word and Excel. And rewriting Word and Excel with, say, 3/4 of desktop functionality in javascript would be both a major code undertaking as well as a porting nightmare, as getting such a huge piece of javascript running in the three different major browsers (i.e. three independently-written interpreters based on a not-very-standard standard) would be nigh impossible. Not to mention that you'd be at the mercy of the other browser-makers if they suddenly decide to tweak a language feature that'll break your app. And you have to support older browsers that may or may not have broken javascript features. And any problems with sub-par or slow javascript implementations are gonna get blamed on you.
But what if you had a VM that ran as a plugin, and you had complete control over it? And what if the VM interpreter could compile much of your code as-is? And what if your codebase has existed since the 1980's with nicely separated presentation and file layers that could be rewritten (this is at least the case with Excel, as that was the biggest case-study in Debugging The Development Process). Then you could conceivably create something almost as rich as the desktop equivalent and with all the convenience of other web-apps.
Office Live Spaces is at best a band-aid competitor to Google Docs, and its main deficiency is one that cannot be overcome -- it requires MS Office on any machine that it uses. But what if, instead of purchasing MS Office, I could pay a subscription fee for a fully-featured MS Office that stores my documents in the cloud and would be available to me anywhere where there's a web-browser?
And also couple it with something along the lines of AIR or Google Gears so it'll still work locally like its "classic" desktop equivalent.
Of course, it remains to be seen if Microsoft can pull it off, but I bet they're working on it. Google is certainly working on their suite, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Adobe Buzzword suddenly sprouted a spreadsheet and a way to work offline.
I think the next big war five years from now is gonna be for who can get the bestest and richest Office suite that can seamlessly switch between running online and offline.
And on that note, I predict that Adobe's gonna buy a.viary.com. Google could buy 'em, but they seem to be leaning towards doing everything in javascript. A.viary's written in Flex and could merge seamlessly with Buzzword.
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| Let the language war begin | |
Posted - 6/17/2008 10:59:14 AM | I'm writing a followup to my venerable old very-outdated What Language Do I Use? article, and I'd like a little advice. The article isn't bad, but it's clearly showing its age. The languages I covered back then were.
C
C++
C or C++ (which is better)
Assembly
Pascal
Visual Basic
Java
Authoring Tools (Flash, Director, IconAuthor, Hypercard)
And I'm trying to update things for the present. The fixes I see thus-far are. . .
- add the .NET languages with C# and VB.NET subsections. That'll kill the Visual Basic section.
- replace the "Authoring Tools" section with "Flash" because Flash won that war.
- replace Pascal with Python. Pascal seems to be much more of a niche-player nowadays than Python. Seems like most of the old Pascal language-zealots are now worshipping C# or Python, so I don't think I'll break any hearts there.
- server languages (PHP, as well as a short discussion of previously-mentioned languages that work nicely on a server, like Python and ASP.NET)
And yeah I know I'm starting a language war here, but my goal is to be pragmatic and cover technologies that are used now and in the very near future to create viable commercial products. Hence I don't think I'm gonna mention javascript because it doesn't exist beyond very small projects, and Silverlight isn't really anywhere in game development either. The javascript thing might change with that Apple Cocoa-gizmo that was just announced, but that's a ways down the road before we even see it, much less when we start seeing quality game-products done with it. And Silverlight might change as soon as someone ports a terrific 3D shooter to it, but that's also a ways away if ever.
Java will probably get a much heavier emphasis on its use as a server language than a client one because I haven't seen any growth in Java as a client technology, but it does seem to now have a comfortable niche for servers.
So I'm at this now. . .
C
C++ (with the "C versus C++" part in the conclusion)
Assembly (probably keep this very short, no real growth here)
Python
Java (emphasizing server use more than client)
.NET languages (specifically C# and VB.NET)
Flash
Server languages (PHP, server-side Java and Python, ASP.NET)
Any omissions?
Okay, any HUGE omissions? I know I probably oughta mention Perl and Haskell and Ruby (on or off Rails) and LUA, but you're gonna have to lobby for those.
Discuss. . .
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| Yeah I'm still here | |
Posted - 6/12/2008 11:34:01 AM | Going in about a dozen directions and feeling like I'm not making headway on any of 'em. I got stuff going on with games. I got stuff going on with books. I gotta write reviews. I gotta write outlines. I just gotta write. Bleah, write write write.
And I gotta write a blog. Thus-far, I've been more faithful writing in twitter lately, mainly because it only takes up about ten seconds of time when I feel the need for distraction.
And in penance for my lack of posting, I'll post a pretty picture. Japanese BaffleBees.
If the client likes it, I should have about twelve games in five languages. Lots of cutting and pasting monkey-work, but it'll get done.
Also, Duck Tiles is now up at Big Fish Games. Happy duck-pushing!
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| We are widgetized! | |
Posted - 6/2/2008 10:51:31 AM | Here's some good news if you're a fan of putting web-widgets on your personal pages. Thanks to the folks at WidgetBox, all of The Code Zone's Flash games are now available as web-widgets for your favorite homepage and social network. Every game page (as well as the Play-n-Share page) now has links with one-stop installation to your blog, Google Homepage, NetVibes, FaceBook, Bebo, and a half-dozen other platforms that support widgets.
Note that while the daily puzzle games are included, they're not running in "daily mode", so your users or readers don't have to have an account at The Code Zone if they want to play. And you can play the games over and over, which makes more sense if the games are installed on a homepage.
Enjoy the games, and if you find a particularly creative way to use the game widgets, be sure to contact me.
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| Freebie anyway | |
Posted - 5/28/2008 11:17:16 AM | First off, a big thanks for nothing for the utter lack of response to my previous entry. Either you don't care or you don't read. Neither is all that encouraging, but it does take the pressure off to know that there's really no standard to which I need to aspire, public or private. I guess it's a bit like being on a software project that you know is going to fail (of which I've been on a couple). You suddenly realize that you're working too hard at what you do, so you just let the arrival of your paychecks be the standard to which you aspire.
Yeah, it's a mite depressing, but I get enough feedback at my little browser-games to let me know that I'm going in the right direction in that sphere. Everyone's feedback-driven to one extent or another, and I get enough feedback there (positive and negative) to make up for it elsewhere.
On an unrelated note, good freebie today from Giveaway Of The Day. It's a little screen-recorder and playback gizmo. It allows you to define an area of the screen, records that area for as long as you want, then lets you save out that area in an animated format (Flash or AVI). Very handy if you wanna make an animated tutorial for something.
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| Reviewing the reviews | |
Posted - 5/22/2008 10:10:01 AM | Just noticed that four of seven of the featured articles on the front page of gamedev are mine. Mind you, a couple of 'em are pretty minor, specifically a review of a book aimed at kids and a review of some kewl gamer-oriented bits. Still, I do a fair amount of semi-professional writing.
And apart from my official proofreader (Shelly), I get precious little feedback. As TANSTAAFL will attest, I'm a reviewer because I care about nobody's opinions but my own on. . .anything (and he was saying it as a compliment), but that only goes so far. Feedback can be a useful thing if it gives one room to improve.
So that being said, whattya think? Do I write too much? Too little? Is my tone too breezy? Not breezy enough? Do I use a form of subject-verb agreement that just rubs you the wrong way? Is my fanatical avoidance of ending sentences with prepositions something up with which you will not put?
If you got a minute, drop me a comment and lemme know what you think.
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| Razer Reviews | 
Posted - 5/16/2008 12:25:14 PM | I'm trying something a little different here. You see, I get lots of products to review. And I'm loath to turn anything down, and that's for two reasons: 1. I actually rather like writing reviews. It keeps me from living under a bridge, and it keeps my writing skills sharp. 2. I like stuff. Problem is, I really only have one outlet for reviews, and that is gamedev.net. And once in a while I get stuff that's not really all that related to game development but is still review-worthy. Also, Drew and I have recently made an effort to purge the gamedev article database of obsolete articles and dead links and stuff that probably shouldn't have been included in the first place. And that means that old reviews are good purge candidates, especially if they're of products that no longer exist or are way out of date or are only tangentially related to game development in the first place. So I decided to put reviews in the Bargain Basement Blog once in a while. That way I can still talk about the product in my official capacity as gamedev reviewer, and also I don't have to worry about reviews from happy sponsors being purged from gamedev sometime in the future. As long as gamedev and blogspot (which I must add is owned by Google) stay around, the reviews will live. Which means that the reviews will live forever. That being said, here's the first in what will be an occasional series of gadget reviews.
The Razer Piranha Gaming Communicator and the Razer Destructor Professional Gaming Mat Quite some time ago, I (along with Terri Carey) reviewed pro|tone m100 and m250 Earphones and the Pro|Solutions pro|pad. I actually quite liked the products. In fact, I grabbed another set of m250's when woot.com put 'em on sale. And I still use the pro|pad. I liked the product quite a lot back when I reviewed it, and I recommended it to anyone who could live with the thought of owning a mousepad that costs more than an average mouse. So I was enthused when a new box arrived from Razer, presumably packed with pretentiously named and packaged products. And I wasn't disappointed. Any company that has the hubris to call a mouse pad a "Razer Destructor Professional Gaming Mat" deserves at least a little attention. For the record, the official page for the Destructor is here. And it's worth a look just for the adjectives they like to heap on their gamer products. It actually rather reminds me of an introduction to an old Monty Python record I had as a kid, which described the fine quality of the plastic and how the hole in the center of the record had been drilled to fit my personal record player with all the precision of finest Swiss craftsmanship. But, in Razer's defense, they don't take themselves and their image completely seriously. Along with the Destructor pad and the headphones were some cards welcoming me to the "Cult of Razer". And it is actually a very nice mouse pad. In fact, it's the nicest I've used. The surface, like with the pro|pad, is slightly abrasive and works perfectly with my optical mouse. The surface is also, despite being plastic, very hard and seems pretty scratch resistant. This, IMHO, puts it ahead of stuff like those 3M precision mousing surfaces which also work well but seem to scratch rather easily. I've had the Destructor on my desk for a couple of months and it looks as good as the day it arrived. Unlike the pro|pad, though, it doesn't have the nice metal backing and the double-sided surface. It's a plastic surface backed by a neoprene rubber table-gripper. The size and shape is very nice. It's only very slightly larger than the pro|pad, but the actual mousing surface is quite a bit larger because the surface covers the entire pad and doesn't stop shy of the edge like the pro|pad. So this does turn out to be a really large mousepad. It requires more desk real-estate than the aforementioned 3M pads, but unlike the 3M pads, you'll never find yourself driving the mouse off the edge. Oh, and it includes a case. Yes, a case. For a mousepad. I suppose this is handy if you're using it for a laptop or you're taking your machine to a gaming LAN-party, but I really haven't put the case to much use. In the case's defense, it's quite nice. It's thick and padded and has a Razer logo on the front. My only worry is that if it got mushed or folded, the pad might get creased even in the case. And the price is pretty high. The Amazon price is $37, which is almost ten bucks more than the pro|pad. While I do like the surface and size a bit better than the pro|pad, the pro|pad does have the advantage of being double-sided (in case you accidentally mess up one side) and is practically indestructible. Honestly, if I had a lot of money to spend on a mouse pad, I'd stick with the pro|pad. Even though the website proclaims that the Destructor is superior for gaming, I think the pro|pad's lower price and other advantages make it a better choice unless you absolutely have to follow an all-black color scheme. Next we have the Razer Piranha gaming Communicator, which was immediately co-opted by my wife upon opening the box. Despite appearing to be something that must be married to a particular game console, the Piranha has standard microphone and headphone jacks and hooked up to the PC just fine. It also has a USB connection that I don't quite understand. Best I can tell, the USB is used to power the blue LED lights on the side of the headphones as well as on the little volume dongle. The actual cable is very nicely coated in braided nylon and looks very tough. In fact, if Lassie ever barks at me because Timmy fell down a well, I'm gonna grab these headphone cables to pull him out. Actually, I probably wouldn't. While the nylon covers the cable itself, it stops about two inches from the jacks at the end. I'm not quite sure if this is a good idea or a bad one. If your headphone cable is gonna fail, it's likely going to happen at the plugs, so having nylon webbing stop before the plugs doesn't help as much as it should. On the other hand, if somebody manages to pull on my headphone cable hard enough to break something, I'd rather break off the headphone plug than the headphone socket that's attached to the motherboard. In the couple-months use of the Piranha, Shelly's had a couple of complaints. One is with the obligatory volume dongle in the middle of the headphone cable. The little volume wheel is pretty loose and changes with the lightest touch. I don't know if it's intended to be this loose for fleet-fingered gamers who need the most precise and quick control of gaming volume during crucial moments of the story (hey look, I'm a Razer marketer), but she does occasionally find the headphones adjusting the volume on their own just by rubbing against her pants while she sits at her desk. And it's a problem that's going to likely solve itself soon with a piece of scotch tape. The other complaint is with the shape of the headphones themselves. Here's the publicity photo of the headphones.  As you can see, they're not very round. They're a bit angular. And if you push the earphones apart so they fit your head, the shape is a bit squarish. So rather than cradling your head or not contacting your head at all, the top of the Piranha touches the top of your head. And it's not noticeable at first, but it's a mite annoying after prolonged wearing. So my conclusions for these two products: Destructor Professional Gaming Mat - Very nice and big and tough, but expensive. The Razer pro|pad is probably a better choice. Piranha Gaming Communicator - Very nice cables, but easily maladjusted volume dongle and a mite uncomfortable to wear for a long time.
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| I gots invitations | |
Posted - 5/8/2008 12:45:22 PM | Dunno if any of you have been following the RIA (Rich Internet Applications) space, but that's getting to be a big thing. Basically it's people putting replacements for apps that you'd normally install on your hard drive up on the web. It's currently taking baby steps right now, but there is a critical mass of sorts of web-based applications out there.
And I'll be the first to say that RIA apps aren't yet the equivalent of their standalone counterparts. Much like that "Gimp is even better than Photoshop" crowd, anyone who tells you that Google Spreadsheet is as good as MS Excel simply hasn't used Excel very much.
But that's not to say that Google Spreadsheet isn't a player. Its price (free) coupled with its web-based collaboration/sharing tools and its ability to edit spreadsheets from anywhere you can find a web browser is a compelling set of features that Excel just isn't gonna match. And in a lot of cases, the advantages of an online spreadsheet are gonna override the rich user experience that you get from real Excel installed on your computer.
And there are a couple of local apps that I've discarded entirely for web-based equivalents. While I still prefer Word and Excel to any web-based replacements, I have uninstalled Outlook in favor of Google Calendar and Yahoo's Deluxe Email.
And all that foreshadowing brings me to a.viary.com, which is a pretty big suite of fully online Flash-based image, vector, and 3D tools, all running in your browser. They're all written in Flex, and they're pretty good. Thus-far, the only two they've released to a closed beta community are "Phoenix", which is a baby-Photoshop image editing tool, and "Peacock", which is a very cool algorithmic pattern making tool.
It'll be interesting to see where this suite goes. For example, could it collaborate with a service like Flickr so I could upload my photos there and then edit and rotate 'em online? Thus-far, a.viary.com has its own picture cloud for image storage, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes.
Also it'll be interesting to see if they go with something like Adobe AIR in case you do want to edit pictures locally or if you're on a laptop that might or might not have a handy internet connection. I'm currently using Twhirl, which is an AIR-based application, and I'm pretty impressed with how smoothly it works despite it actually being a Flash application that's just pretending to be a standalone EXE.
Anyways, I have five beta invites if you'd like to try the system out and its current crop of two available applications. And they're yours if you want one.
But because I am a greedy person, I will state that I'm gonna give priority to those who have signed themselves up to Money Exchange and gotten their free $25 (and the free referral-bucks for me).
Note that I don't actually have the ID's of the folks who have signed up to Money Exchange, so it'll have to be done by the honor system. I can, however, confirm that it does work. I transferred the Money Exchange cash out to my account a couple of days ago, and it's now available for me to spend on loose living.
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| Full moons! | |
Posted - 5/7/2008 11:15:32 AM | This comic gave me a laugh because it reminded me of a "full moon fever" event in my own life.
About 6.5 years ago, Shelly and I were doing the "getting ready to make a baby" shtick, and we toured the babymaking ward of our local hospital to see all the rooms and the check-in procedure and all the important stuff that you'll forget the minute your wife goes into labor.
While checking out the ward, the nurse remarked that things that day were pretty quiet, and that was because the moon wasn't full. Once there was a full moon, you could guarantee that the place would be hopping and that doctors and nurses and relatives would be all over the place. Shelly and I just gave each other the eye-rolling look and went on with the tour.
After getting home, I happened by the wall-calendar in the kitchen. It's one of those calendars with little moon-phases printed in the corner of the days.
And guess what was happening that very day.
Yep, full moon. Couldn't have been more ironic if we'd planned it in advance.
And I'm sure those nurses are working just like the cops in the comic strip. If they have a busy day with lots of babies and running around, then it must be a full moon. Never mind that it's a pretty trivial process to check for a full moon, even if you're working indoors. They just keep the meme alive out of sheer intellectual inertia.
And it's just one of those things that makes no damn sense on its face, like "don't buy a red car because they get in more accidents". The fact that insurance companies charge more money for the model of the car but not the color debunks that rumor more effectively than anything. Ditto for crime and babies. If crime and births increase during full moons, then why don't police departments and hospitals staff up on those days?
It's because it doesn't. Werewolves aren't real. Live with it.
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| Big News - Duck Tiles is now free! | |
Posted - 5/6/2008 6:36:23 PM | Well, mostly free. After looking over my existing games, I decided that Duck Tiles could better serve the community (and make more money) if it was ad-supported. Therefore I have re-tooled the game a bit and I'm releasing it 100% free.
As it stands, not all 216 levels are currently available. Like Bulldozer, I decided to re-deploy the game as a three-parter, and each part will be free. Currently I have a 77-level version that's available for free here. In the coming months, I will be releasing Duck Tiles 2 and Duck Tiles 3, also with 77 levels each.
I'm currently still selling the full 216-level version if you just can't wait for the sequels to arrive. This version will remain available on the site until Duck Tiles 2 and 3 arrive. At that time, I'm going to phase out the commercial version of Duck Tiles, and it'll be completely ad-supported.
I hope you enjoy playing the new Duck Tiles, and please tell your friends about it. If you want to embed Duck Tiles (or any one of my other games) in your blog or web page, check out my play-n-share page here.
Happy playing!
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| Friday Freebie Fest | |
Posted - 5/2/2008 9:46:05 AM | It's recession-time, folks. And that means that you need to take advantage of the freebies as you can get 'em. Here are the freebies for today. . .
1
First up is free science fiction books! Well, not really books per-se, but Tor, the science fiction division of McMillan publishers, is giving away free legal e-books for signing up to their mailing list. It's pretty-much a no-brainer. You fill out your info in the form, and every friday they send you an email with links to a new e-book from their catalog. And they're not in any weird DRM-locked formats either. You get links to PDF, HTML, and Mobi format books. This week's book is Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which I recently got on paperbackswap for Shelly.
It'd probably be worth it to head over to ebay and buy an old model PDA or PalmPilot or PocketPC to use as an e-reader. Ebay routinely sells those little Palm Zire organizers for under $50, and those would work fine, although you might wanna spring for a PocketPC just for the higher resolution screen.
Or if you got the big bucks, get one of those Amazon readers. They just came back into stock. Although it's gonna take a lot of reading to cost-justify a $400 gizmo.
2
And speaking of free books, my next freebie is old and obvious. The public library. For the low price of free, your local public library has enough books and videos to keep you reading for the rest of your life and then some. I currently frequent the Southlake library (because I'm a resident and it's free) and the Grapevine library ($25 a year but much bigger than Southlake). The Southlake library features free inter-library loan, which means that if I can find a book at damn near any library in the country (searchable at worldcat.org), they can get it for me.
And don't be bashful about requesting that they buy a new book. Shelly often does that with the Southlake library and they're pretty good about buying 'em. Libraries generally work off a common list of books-that-they-should-buy, which consists of current bestsellers, classics, references, and requests from locals. And local requests tend to be at the top of the list because they know they'll be checked out.
Also check out your library's online presence. Both of our libraries have an RSS feed of new books so you don't even need to go to the library to see what's new.
Apart from comics and kids' books, I haven't bought a book in quite a while. There's just no point.
3
The third freebie is the best. Free money!
Yep, again it's one of those well-funded startups that is trying to bootstrap itself by handing out free money to everyone who signs up. This one is MoneyExchange, and it's a paypal knockoff. And you know the drill. You sign up, $25 appears in your account, and once your account is verified you can then transfer the cash out or use to purchase things from anyone who accepts MoneyExchange currency.
Which is. . .umm. . .well nobody.
So just transfer the $25 out and keep it.
And it's legit. It's backed by a couple of large banks. Not sure what those large banks were thinking when they decided they could unseat Paypal, but hey. If they wanna give me $25 for the effort, it's fine with me.
Here's the link below. I get a couple of extra bucks for referring you, so use that button to sign up, get $25 free, and spend it on loose living.
Finally, Shelly's computer is now officially built. Apart from the 32-in-one card reader thingy that had a hundred wires coming from it and was just a mite too difficult to figure out all the connections, it went pretty smoothly. I'm now the proud owner of a four-processor 8-gig 64-bit monstrosity with 8 USB ports.
Biggest problem I see now regards running our ancient (at least according to HP) inkjet plotter. According to them, the Designjet 450c is just too goldurned old, and there will not be any 64-bit drivers made for it. I did find a Spanish company that makes a universal plotter driver that they claim will drive it from any OS, 32 or 64-bit. If I can't find a better solution, I'll likely be opening up my wallet and getting that.
Other problem came in with the case. After the PR-guy offered me the case, I didn't hear from him again. Having been in the review business for a while, I knew the drill. Happens all the time. People promise you something, and you never actually see it. After a couple of weeks, I assumed that the case wouldn't be forthcoming, so I went down to Fry's and bought a rather tasteful boring rectangular Antec case with power supply.
Murphy's law taking hold, the big monstrosity multi-fan case arrived the next day. And since I am not really into the idea of re-wrestling the motherboard into another case, I'll need to find a new project for it. Don't worry, though. The case will get itself reviewed, even if I gotta build a four-processor beast for myself :)
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| I'm all a-twitter | |
Posted - 4/29/2008 11:17:48 AM | Sorry about the recent lack of updates. I do have some new stuff happening and I'll report on 'em when I get the chance.
If you're one of the millions who worship me and live vicariously through me and cannot go 24 hours without immersing yourself in the wonder that is me, then you can keep up with me on Twitter. My ID is the very obscure "johnhattan", and my public feed is at the also-obscure http://twitter.com/johnhattan
And I got twhirl running all the time on my main development box, so if you @ me, I'll see it.
I actually rather like Twitter. It's a good outlet for random thoughts that need an outlet but don't warrent a blog-post. And twhirl is a really nice little piece of software.
I also update pownce and tumblr (twitter-clones) under the same ID, but those are done automatically. Of the three, I recommend Twitter. It's the one that's catching on.
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| New article is up | |
Posted - 4/22/2008 11:26:18 AM | I'm now working on a more regular writing schedule with Gamedev, and my goal is to post one large-format (approx 1000 words) article or review per week.
And here's the first review from that new schedule. It's the Chumby, which is an adorable little lumpy thing that displays widgets.
http://www.gamedev.net/features/reviews/productreview.asp?productid=702
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| ordered the video card | |
Posted - 4/17/2008 9:17:11 AM | Sorry if this machine-build shtick is boring, but I got another piece. This time it's one of those nVidia 8800zyxwvu 500-core video cards. Slickdeals had a rather convoluted deal here that sounds like this. . .
1. nVidia 8800 video card = $190 - $30 rebate
2. Microsoft Windows OneCare = $30 - $30 rebate
3. $20 rebate if you spend $200 via paypal (which is why I bought #2)
Total = 190 + 30 + 5 (shipping) - 30 - 30 - 20 = $145
And that's pretty good. My only worry is that two of the rebates are being handled via TigerDirect, who are the folks who bought the CompUSA name. And Tiger Direct rebates are generally abysmal and take forever to arrive if they arrive at all.
OTOH Microsoft rebates are the best in the business. They have always arrived and typically in three weeks, well ahead of the standard "wait 8-12 weeks" frame.
So even if only the Microsoft one goes through, I get the video card for a net of $195 which is still pretty good.
My biggest worry now is that this computer's gonna contain so many fans that it'll slow down the Earth's rotation when I turn it on, forcing the planet into a more distant orbit and dropping the planet's temperature to a couple degrees above that of the cosmic background radiation, thus killing us all and leaving our anguished cries to echo through the cosmos for eternity.
On another note, I wrote up the test Chumby app for my article on Chumby development that's set to run next week. It's a cute app, and I think it'll be a hit. You'll get to try it out next week, because part of my article regards how to make a Chumby app that'll function both on a Chumby and in a web-page.
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