Software Development Process and Industry Analysis by the former Editor of Software Development, Computer Language, and Game Developer Magazines
Archive for the ‘Offtopic’ Category.
Calculated Risk: Q2 Flow of Funds: Household Net Worth off $12.3 Trillion from Peak.
Not that lost equity has to be paid off (although I knew too many people who used their homes as ATMs during the early 00s), but just in terms of morale, the loss of $12.3T goes a long way to explain the roiling discontent in the US.
Sometime after Space War and Asteroids, but before color was widespread in arcade games, there was a 2-person vector-graphics game in which you and your friend drove “tractors” around and grabbed little diamonds (or whatever) from a pile in the center of the screen and dragged them back to your base. You could shoot the other guy a la Space War, but I think there were also bad guys flying around to shoot a la Asteroids.
Name that Arcade Game!
Update: KSharkey rocks! He correctly identified Rip-Off — with graphics like this, it’s no wonder I was enthralled:
With the advent of color, there was this game involving a grid of city blocks. A dozen or so triangles started moving from one side (or all sides?) through the grid. I don’t recall if you controlled the triangles or you controlled a car trying to get away from them, but over time the triangles would end up crashing into each other and being destroyed. And you either were trying to destroy them all before time ran out or you were trying to keep them alive until you achieved some goal.
Name that Arcade Game!
Update: WillC2 Rocks! Targ it is!
Well, guess I’m going to have to renew my XNA Creator’s Club membership…
“I wrote an encryption algorithm with 612 bits of security.” (I really like to imagine the ‘notes’ from the studio on this — “I like how this establishes that Hansen is a very talented programmer, but let’s bump it up 100 to show he was really good.”)
“We need Linux servers…” (In the year 2000, he expected the FBI to run its infrastructure on OSS? No wonder this guy got nowhere!)
Other than that, the movie was okay, even if it had the cliched cop-out “Why did he do it? Well, in the end it doesn’t matter. He did it. And that’s what counts.” That may be what counts in the real world, but in a story the ‘why’ is central to the job.
Governments at various levels have decided that they have to bail out people who spent more than the houses turned out to be worth and the financial companies who weren’t wise enough to notice that the U.S. is in fact not short of forests that can be cut down for more sprawl. Where will the money come from? You, me, and everyone else who did not participate in the bubble.
So? we missed buying real estate with a lot of leverage back in 2000 and missed the big ride up through 2004 or whenever. Now we get to buy that same real estate at a much higher price and without any upside at all since we won’t actually own any of it.
Yeah, what he said.
Of course I can appreciate the misery of someone who’s underwater on a $400K mortgage, but my sympathy goes away awfully quick when I hear them say “We just never imagined this!”
Didn’t you notice that that whole “closing” business involved you signing, like, 100 pages of documents that were all variations on “YOU OWE LOTS OF MONEY”?
Giving and receiving multi-hundred-thousand dollar loans is adult stuff. I have friends who are not homeowners because they looked at the risks and decided not to take one of these nonsense loans. Now apparently my tax dollars are going to go to help out the imprudent people who caused my friends to be priced out of the market and, in so doing, my tax dollars will help prop up the prices and keep my friends locked out of the market. This is good for society how?
If the November elections are anything like the Democratic caucus I just attended, it will really be something. Turnout was 4-5x the 100 or so expected and the workers ran out of Democratic party registration forms. There was lots of visible support for Obama (native son, true) and none for Hillary.
If Obama gets the nomination and can somehow bring out the disenfranchised … well, wouldn’t that be something.
Based in the S3 Cloud (of course).
Every book has a unique Wiki based on ISBN.
You annotate via a Kindle-browser-friendly blogging engine.
You can view threads chronologically (normal blog view) or if they incorporate references to Kindle “positions,” they can be threaded by location in the book.
Server-side stuff is easy enough; Kindle-friendly blogging editor/display reasonable; barrier to entry is difficulty getting from Kindle reading to Kindle browser (Home -> Experimental -> Web -> Bookmark). Also, positional permalink should be easy but will be hard (“Remember your position in the Kindle book” H->E->W->B -> Note Editor, add text, enter position in field).
Also, links ought to be two-way (“Read Now” ought to open that page in Kindle), but impossible with current firmware:
This photo was taken by Ron Dahlquist yesterday off Maui.
Personally, I got up early to go for a swim in a whale-rich bay this morning and the surf was up and I forgot to shave so my mask kept flooding. It sucked (for sufficiently small values of “sucked”).
The seas are filled with humpbacks, both breeding and nursing. If you go in the water, you can hear them a little if you’re on the surface, but if you can swim down 5′ or so, it can be unbelievable.
Yesterday, we were at Kekaha Kai and a whale swam by about 50 yards away (did I see it underwater? No, I did not. Darn.). They were breaching and slapping tails all over.
Plus, we get surf, but it’s very user-friendly (maybe 2-3′). So tall enough to ride, but small enough to swim through very safely. Kekaha Kai is a hot place to go boogie-boarding and I was actually swimming around inside the waves, watching people take off.
Which was cool until my camera flooded. It was just a cheap submersible disposable from Longs, but still, what a rip. Good thing that whale didn’t swim by!
I used to live several miles from Harvard Square, which was (a) a destination in and of itself and (b) the last stop on the Red Line (back in the day). I used to live about 5 minutes from the Belmont Center route, which ran occasionally, and about 15 minutes from the Waverly Square route, which ran more frequently. However, if I went to the Belmont Center route and walked another 20 minutes, I could get to an intersection served by the Arlington buses as well as the Belmont Center bus. However, doing so involved abandoning the Belmont Center route for about 5 minutes, during which, of course, the bus for which I had been waiting might very well drive by…
Aside from trying to figure out if you got more, less, or identically wet by running or walking through the rain, the question of how best to get to Harvard Square was a central preoccupation of my teenage years. Mathematicians have concluded that I should have waited for the bus.
