codedread

I came across Kyle Wilson’s excellent web page/blog today. There are a lot of good little articles on there about game design, stuff that I generally find intriguing/exciting. I enjoyed his articles on an Object Registry and Data-Driven Design. What’s interesting is that he apparently works for Day 1 Studios (with locations in downtown Chicago and Sparks, Maryland - I’m guessing this guy is in Maryland). Anyway, I’m going to make sure I read each and every one of his articles because this guy is doing exactly what I wish I was doing so he is now officially my hero.

He also wrote a brief article on GDC 2004 so I was able to read up on what the conference was like last year. I think Rob and I are going to try and write something similar about the Expo side of things this year (28 days and counting!).

He also linked to an excellent article about the many forms of software development from the always-interesting Joel Spolsky which I enjoyed.

Read Step 1 first.

Although my interests in digital video are currently taking a backseat to game development, web programming and general Linux administrativeness, I thought I’d add a second entry to this series that discusses the software I used to create my DVDs from analog video sources. Click To Read More...

The kids have this toy schoolbus with all the letters of the alphabet as buttons around the rim which they can press to hear the name of the letter. It’s not long before sleep-deprived parents will use such toys to attempt to amuse themselves.

In that vein, I now present to you a conversation between one of my brothers and a famous Hip-Hop star:

J: G PDD, U R N S.
PDD: O, I B N S? I B DVS N J, U B FRT PP!
J: C, U R SLE S N I M A GNES. T?
PDD: O, OK…

For those of you who need a translation, here it is:

Jay: Gee P. Diddy, you are an ass.
P. Diddy: Oh, I be an ass? I be devious and Jay, you be a farty pee-pee!
Jay: See, you are a silly ass and I am a genious. Tea?
P. Diddy: Oh, okay…

I now apologize for wasting the precious time of the two people who read this blog. I promise a return to more enlightening entries in the near future.

My 25-year old cousin recently took a job with a high-profile internet company in Silicon Valley and he moved to San Jose, CA from Calgary, Alberta this weekend. He was a little bummed because he’s in a new city in a (somewhat) different country, doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t know the area at all, needs to find a permanent place to live in 28-days (and counting), and has never owned a car nor had a cellphone (which the company is getting him for 30 days use). The previous week had been a flurry of paperwork for him trying to get all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed for his Visa/Passport. Needless to say he’s a little stressed. Click To Read More...

After getting bombed with some comment spam yesterday (over 15 of them in various blog entries), I decided I wanted some extra security, but I didn’t want to have to approve every comment (especially when the majority of them were spam). So I thought I’d dig into some PHP again and design my own Captcha.

This little project proved to be more challenging than I thought it would be, the easiest part was generating the unique and random image every time, the hardest part was figuring out how to make sure the image was not reused again (even if the user clicks the “Back” button on his browser). While I won’t get into the details right here and now, suffice to say that it works completely now and I can now work on making the image even more difficult for a computer to read in the future…if anyone wants it let me know (leave a comment, heh) and I’ll post a subsequent entry about some of the details and put the source up.

Anyway, I hope it’s not too annoying to those who wish to leave comments…

Well it looks like the tickets for LebowskiFest West go on sale this Monday. I guess it’s a big deal because the guys who arrange it sent me four identical emails. The “Fest” is a fan gathering to celebrate the Joel & Ethan Coen movie “The Big Lebowski” (1998). If you haven’t seen it yet or it’s been awhile, go rent or buy it today and watch it tonight. Click To Read More...

Read Part One and Part Two first. If you don’t already own a copy of “Design Patterns” by the Gang of Four I would recommend checking it out, since it seems to be the definitive reference.

This entry will continue the discussion on the State Design Pattern. It will be broken up into two parts: a) Responses from feedback I’ve received on the previous two articles and b) Explanation of how we handle input events at the base State class while still providing flexibility for concrete states to implement their own input event handlers. Click To Read More...