| Quote of the Day |
[Jul. 14th, 2008|03:32 pm] |
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"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." --Jim Henson |
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| Going to Seattle |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|10:46 pm] |
July 25th I'll be flying out to Seattle for the weekend for the first time EVER. I'm going with friend/colleague/investor Timothy Fitz. Potentially we'll be staying with a friend, but otherwise winging it.
Now, for some reason I have a number of LJ friends in that area, so I WOULD LIKE TO HANG OUT WITH ALL OF YOU. Or whoever is available. Plez let me know if this is relevant to your interests. <3 |
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| Game developin |
[Jul. 7th, 2008|04:48 am] |
 Whee! This weekend I made a game. It's not done yet... had too much fun fine-tuning. Maybe by the end of the week? I don't think I've made a game since AjaxWar in 2005.
It's called Liquidity for the moment. It's loosely based on the cash flow metaphor I might have mentioned before. I can't wait to add sounds and make it prettier. Core gameplay is there, but needs some spices... powerups, etc. Also more balancing.
Arcade action is fun, but I look forward to prototyping my s3kr1t masterpiece. Also trying to think about how to evoke particular emotional feelings through nonlinear interactive experiences.
TIGdb has VIDEOS now. Snuck that out this weekend too. Then I watched the Cave Story trailer over and over.
And this Fall I'm taking Beginning Acting classes at Foothill. WORD. |
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| Personal Positioning |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|06:46 pm] |
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You know those stories of an author or filmmaker that creates something awesome but can't get it published because it's too hard to position due to its complexity/rambling/incoherency? Sometimes I feel like that thing that won't get published. |
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| Work done on TIGdb plus depression reminder |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|12:14 am] |
Why do I need to feel like I have value in the world? It's such a depressing desire.
Anyway, TIGdb is nearing 300 games thanks to Derek. I got a good number of things done these past 27 hours. The biggest thing were user reviews. It's definitely not as simple as comments. It's tied into the rating system, has helpfulness voting, and flagging for abuse. This was the first step towards more user content on TIGdb.
Along with reviews comes simple profile pages. You get a page with your bio, URL, avatar, and all your reviews. More to add later probably, but we're not trying to create yet another social network.
And since your account is slightly more useful now with a profile and everything, we now let you stay logged in like some people kept bugging us about.
We also have a simple game submission form that will help Derek and others fill out the database. Overall, I got a lot more done than I thought I would. Now we're starting to ask again "where to next?" We have some ideas, but not all of them are things to do now.
So since we're starting to get users interacting a bit more, and we're asking this question, I threw up a UserVoice page and added their Feedback widget to the site. You can suggest ideas or vote on existing ones, as well as just give general feedback.
For as much as I got done, and I really enjoy working with Derek, I don't feel as accomplished as I would have thought. I guess there's just other projects that are pulling on me, distracting these accomplishments. And some other things I suppose. |
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| Technology is a cosmic force |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|12:19 am] |
"The first language and the first technology on Earth was not created by humans. It was created by primordial RNA molecules, almost 4 billion years ago."
--Nils Aall Barricelli, 1954 |
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| Baby Jeffy |
[Jun. 16th, 2008|01:14 am] |
I got my sister a scanner for her birthday. One of the first things she scans:
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| AIM virus? |
[Jun. 14th, 2008|08:02 pm] |
A couple days ago I got a message from somebody that said "Hey" and I asked who it was and they said I just messaged them. I told them what happened and they shrugged it off. They didn't seem like they wanted to talk to a stranger. I was slightly confused and a little annoyed.
Today I get another random message. This time "I pity the fool!" so I ask "Is this a bot?" They say no, I just messaged them. "Must be a bug," they say. So I decided to investigate with this person. At first I thought maybe it was a human powered spam thing, where they have people randomly message screen names to see if they exist then use this as their cover up story. Then I thought maybe it was a virus or adware thing. After talking a bit they said it's happened to them a few times. I asked which client and they were running the standard AIM client. That sounds like a victim of malware to me.
But if I was hit twice in a few days, that's got to be something viral or coming from someplace popular. It can't be me because I'm using Gtalk in Gmail... in any case, this is pretty odd. |
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| Update bits |
[Jun. 14th, 2008|07:23 pm] |
I'm sick. I think I got it from Derek. Speaking of which, seems like everybody in the TIGSource community is really excited about TIGdb. Derek and I came up with some cool ideas to help make it self-sufficient, support indie developers financially, and hopefully expand the indie game community. We'll have to wait a few sprints before we can get to these particular ideas though.
Mailhook.org is being renamed to MailHooks.com and a few people are using it now. Joel at PBwiki is experimenting with an email to wiki feature using it. I started talking with a guy in the Google App Engine community that built something similar because of the rising need for it there. We might combine forces at some point. I've almost got everything working... headers are still breaking stuff, so I don't pass all the raw headers, and attachments mostly work if you send more than one. Kind of weird. And Andrew and I are trying to settle on a new layout he put together.
Today I went to help David Weekly with his Learn CS project. I was supposed to help put together visual aids to complement his lectures, but apparently because of recent feedback he's wanting to change formats to more of a workshop. We decided to go through the process of building Connect Four online, eventually as a Facebook app. So instead of working on visual stuff, I ended up doing my own implementation of a web-based Connect Four alongside David. He did his own version, which he got done faster because he was less concerned about starting elegance and I got stuck getting the win condition check algorithm done (I haven't used PHP in a while, but my lower level algorithm foo has never been super great). Mine isn't over engineered or anything, but it is more than a single PHP file like David's. Nevertheless, we both got working, playable Connect Four games done in a couple hours.
I really liked his talks and wished he kept the lecture format, but in the way we had discussed on the phone the other night. The idea was Monday meetings would be discussion about the lectures which would be available online to watch at one's convenience. I was looking forward to putting those together with David, but maybe we'll come back to that later.
I think I also picked up a student from the Learn CS group. I haven't been talking about it much, but I've been offering one-on-one lessons for programming in Python and Ruby. She wasn't happy with the way Learn CS was going so I offered her lessons. Given she still wants private lessons instead of the new group project workshop format of Learn CS, I'll have my first student starting in July.
I'm also doing a metal version of Weezer's Say It Ain't So with a friend, so I'll probably be working on finishing the drums for that tonight. \m/ |
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| Quick thought on the way things could be |
[Jun. 12th, 2008|12:31 am] |
If there's one set of things I wish everybody was properly educated on in the world it's
1. an awareness of perception and abstraction in relation to objective reality (an under appreciated foundation of knowledge and understanding),
2. relativism and the implications and inevitability of interdependence (for tolerance of differences), and
3. generalism with emphasis on analogy (to make similarities more obvious).
I want to say they should be as important as morals. What's funny is that Wikipedia describes morals in the main section on ethics as "a practice of different sorts of ethics (or Weltanschauung)"... Weltanschauung being the word of German philosophy that we got worldview from, an idea heavily observed in item 1 on my list.
I believe these things would help promote a wiser, more effective and tolerant global society.
And all these things are significant core values of systems theory. |
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| An Oldie but a Goodie |
[Jun. 12th, 2008|12:16 am] |
For all those that enjoyed my drivers license.
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| Guarana: Eyeball pods |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|01:13 pm] |
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[Jun. 4th, 2008|02:08 am] |
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In business, are entrepreneurs to "MBA's" what in technology hackers are to engineers? What might the equivalent be in science? Theoretical to empirical? |
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| Caltrain sucked today |
[Jun. 3rd, 2008|10:51 pm] |
Just to recap my train experience today, as some may have seen on Twitter:
-Station was packed because the train was running 20 minutes late
-It was the baby bullet so it was going to be pretty packed on the train as well
-Even more packed... had fewer cars because a bunch broke/needed maintenance
-Train stopped before it got to South SF, engine broke
-Eventually the power went out, the generator broke
-They decided to have the next train behind us push our train
-It took forever and they had lots of technical difficulties
-When they hooked the power from their train to ours, it broke their power
-Power finally started coming back on, but would constantly go out
-Finally got us moving but at 30 mph
-Only last two cars could let people off at South SF, the desperate got off
-Slowly got to Millbrae where we were told to get off and catch the next few trains
-All following trains were up to 20 minutes late
-The next train was packed before it got there, but was the only limited stop train
-The following trains were all stops with no schedule, but at least there were seats
-Ultimately took 3 hours to get to Sunnyvale when it should have taken 50 minutes |
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[Jun. 3rd, 2008|12:05 am] |
Me: How would you describe how I'm different?
Friend: You're nicer
Friend: Not as pompous
Me: Well I hope I continue to move in the direction of nicer!
Friend: Heh
Friend: You've always been a little bizarre but i like that |
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| Sprint Rant. It's the future |
[May. 29th, 2008|11:28 pm] |
I'm scrambling to finish my deliverables for tomorrow because I've been getting distracted by other things. Plus I hit one of those really stupid rough spots in the app that doesn't deserve to be so rough (an effort for value thing).
But I did something really cool this week. On Tuesday I sprinted with friends on a commercial project (so it was technically a contract job, I got paid and everything) and we got a TON done in a single day. It was an add-on to their existing product TypeRoom, which is interesting because it was as fun as a new project. (I just realized one under-appreciated advantage to a distributed architecture is that making additions to the system becomes nearly as fun as a new standalone project. That has tremendous value!)
This sprinting thing needs to be thought about more in many different places. Sure there have been open source project sprints (Mash Pit is about this idea), and sometimes companies will do internal sprints. But the neat thing about this was that it involved an outsider for an internal commercial project. Contract sprinters! It's weird because it felt very jam session like. How often is there collaboration across startups at the individual level in the form of sprints for commercial stuff?
Sprints are fun. When you're working on a new project and you execute it right, it's just so amazing to see some great value come out in such short time. And all the pieces come together before your eyes, like when you're working on a large project over a long period of time and you slowly see it all come together, sometimes so slow you don't even realize it. Here's it's very obvious and seems to feedback into the productivity that makes things happen so quickly.
So we need to see how we can make sprints happen more often. Not only was it fun, we built something cool, gained a lot of experience, but we got paid! All in a day. And then it's over. (Well, there's a followup session scheduled for next week, but then I'm probably out of it).
I've been thinking about this for a while and how to get the most of out these. A while back I was even thinking of it as a new model for startups in a way. It's like a distributed incubator model with rapid application development/deployment.
Imagine a small group of people getting together to build something for a day. All the infrastructure is there, version control, wiki, ticketing, but even a deploy system and production server. Healthy snacks and drinks. Everybody prepped with a good night sleep. Set some goals, cut things, cut things, and GO. Then deploy. Then you're done.
Do this every week with different people and you get really good at it. If you're launching products, everybody can take an optional amount of stake, but should have the option to just walk away. If it takes off, those that are willing to come back and support it can and will obviously get bigger stake. You're doing it every week and you get paid for it (optional!), but it could also be an investment. Do this a lot with the right people and you can't help but land a winner now and then.
Anyway, I could go on, but I'll leave you with this guy because he's really really awesome:
( I want to be this awesome ) |
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[May. 19th, 2008|04:41 am] |
Edgar Cayce, what'd you dream?
Tell the world the world you've seen.
Heal the sick with a mystic eye,
give humanity a place to die. |
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| Charming little music |
[May. 2nd, 2008|04:10 am] |
Tonight while Timothy was over I impolitely ignored him and started playing the guitar. Then I got bored and started playing with MIDI drums. This led to chiptunes percussion sounds and then my 8-bit synths... then I started recording things.
By this time Timothy decided to leave, supposedly because he was "tired" but I think he hates chiptunes. Actually I don't think that. But he left and I kept working until I had something I could arrange as a short piece. So here you have my first chiptunes piece:
Walk Outside, It's Nice
Does this make me a chiptunes artist?! |
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progrium's journal