2012

Published on 1/1/2012 in General. 0 Comments

The mini I use to host this site decided it needed a break six months ago. Caden, son number two, arrived a couple months there after. Point being, this site received no attention. Twitter (@c0l0mb) functioned well as a nice substitute, but its a new year, so I figure I should make an effort. Posts should resume their unreliable frequency shortly.

Lots of stuff is missing. Despite preaching backups to all around me, the site had no regular backup scheme, so I’ve lost a couple of the more recent posts and I’ll need to fire up the old G4 to grab some copies of some other stuff.

Limbo

Published on 9/21/2010 in General. 0 Comments

Almost four years ago, I briefly mentioned a game called Limbo. It became available on Xbox Live in late July….of this year. I’m not sure why it took so long for the developers to complete it, but either way I picked it up shortly ( the day of maybe? ) it was released. I just finished it this evening. In my previous post I likend the game to Flashback or Out of This World, and while the gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of those two, the atmosphere created throughout the game is something vastly different. The sounds, images, puzzles, and repeatedly watching this poor little boy die violently comes together in strangely moving way. My time playing vids is now somewhat constrained, but its titles like this that will keep me at it.

on short competitive games

Published on 5/14/2010 in games and General. 0 Comments

For the past couple months I’ve found myself unable to stop playing certain types of games. Two games in particular, Bejeweled Blitz and Geometry Wars 2, make use of a special sauce I believe to be key for small games these days.

I’ll get right to it. Short play time and competition are the answer. Any game that ends in under three minutes and allows the player to compare scores or compete against others has a better chance of being successful. The vast majority of games I’ve sunk significant time into have had the above traits.

Why three minutes? Because I totally made that up. Hmm, thats probably not true. I think thats a hold over from the many hours recently spent playing Geometry Wars 2. When I think of it though, few of the games I think of when writing this lasted more than three minutes. Tetris, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, and Bejeweled Blitz all have quick play times. Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo allowed you to beat your opponent in less than thirty seconds if you were fast enough. Why is this so effective? Shortened attention spans? I’m not sure, but I can say from personal experience that I enjoy not being too invested in any particular game/round. Its far less frustrating. It also allows me to improve at a faster pace. I’m more likely to compete in a game again if it doesn’t take me 20 minutes to lose.

I’m not sure the whole competitive angle needs to be explained too much. Maybe its human nature, but I derive more satisfaction from besting an opponent ( opponent’s score ) than continuously trying to beat my own. That’s the nature of competition. This is no secret. All major gaming consoles are networked, allowing you to compare your scores and achievements with friends. Brilliant. Add to that our always connected smart phones and social media sites and we have a have a huge network of connected, competitive gamers.

Keep it short, keep it simple, and attempt to plug into the vast network of connected gamers and I think you’ll have an addictive result

iPad thoughts part two

Published on 5/2/2010 in General and tech. 0 Comments

I’m not sure how things were in the city, but getting an iPad in the suburbs was far easier then expected. I’ve been using it for a month now, and i thought it was time to get some thoughts down. The device itself has been reviewed ad nauseum, so I’m going to focus on how it’s changed my computing habits at home.

The first thing I’ve noticed is how little I use my laptop now. If I could get my work VPN connection to work correctly, I’m pretty sure I could get laptop usage close to zero, unless I’m doing actual development. Given a good vnc client I could probably get some development work done, but the screen real estate is going to be somewhat of a limiting factor there.

When using the iPad I’m in Safari 90% of the time. Browsing the web and reading articles from the couch or in bed is so much more pleasurable using the iPad than my laptop. It’s far more natural and comfortable. My only complaint about Safari is that I can’t open a link into a new “tab” in the background. I tend to read articles that link to many others. When clicking a link I want to read later opens up a new tab in the foreground, it disrupts my reading of the current article. There have been one or two sites that haven’t been usable, but for the most part, the browsing experience feels complete. I’d expected most of the videos linked through my google reader feeds to fail, but they’ve all played either inline or through the YouTube app flawlessly.

Other apps I find myself using are the New York Time Editor Choice and Netflix. I’ve read more nyt articles in the past month than I have in the last couple years!! The Netflix app is relatively straight forward but I find myself more open to watching stuff on the iPad than my laptop. I think it’s the relative ease of using the app and not have my laptop and it’s fans running at full speed on my lap.

This is just the beginning, and a good one at that. I’m eager to see the platform and OS evolve over the next couple years.

Traveling with the iPad is understandably easier, but what the iPad has me wondering is if I really need a laptop anymore? Is it time to go back to a more powerful desktop setup and use the iPad when or when not doing more complicated work ( video editing, development )? Those tasks are more suited for a desktop setup to begin with. I guess I’m really wondering if the iPad improves enough on all the portability functions that I don’t need a laptop anymore…

Note: this entire entry was written from the comfort of a reading chair in the living room while watching Meet the Press. That’s a fancy new set they’ve got there!

Free IDEs

Published on 2/26/2010 in code and General. 0 Comments

The first IDE I really became familiar with was Eclipse. It integrated with CVS and JUnit, and the code completion was quite nice. The user experience was pretty rough though. Not as rough as my encounters with Visual Studio, but really, who compares anything to Visual Studeo. At my next job, I was introduced to JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. At first, I couldn’t see any advantage over Eclipse, especially after learning the cost of the license. After a month or so though, I became far more proficient with IDEA than I had been with Eclipse. I’ve come to appreciate it’s polish and attention to details. I recently tried running a new version of Eclipse, and, sadly, the user experience remains the same. Setting up my project with existing sources was painful, and the size of our project gave Eclipse some trouble. So, like any good developer, I tried something new; I moved onto NetBeans.

I’ve been running NetBeans 6.8 for the past month or so. My initial attraction to it, other than the cost, was the improved font rendering in the editor over my version of IDEA. When you’re looking at text on a screen all day, its nice to have some decent font rendering. It took a day or so to get all the key mappings and code formatting correct, but eventually I was running fairly smoothly. NetBeans has some other niceties such as the built in profiler, jConsole integration, the ability to float as many editor windows as you want and strong support for other languages. Code completion in jsps is nice…… So, other than the endless “Scanning Project” and some UI nits, I was humming along with NetBeans until one day, it just stopped compiling all the project code. No matter how many time I asked NetBeans to clean the build directory and rebuild everything, it would only build about 80% of the project. I eventually tracked the issue down to the compile on save feature, but NetBeans lost some good will with this one.

So, while I waited for NetBeans to scan my project after the 10th rebuild attempt, I turned to JetBrains and checked their website for a new milestone build of their next version of IDEA. To my surprise, they are now offering a free “Community Edition” of IDEA. It’s mostly feature complete when compared to the version I was running before moving to NetBeans, and it fixes the nasty font rendering issues I was encountering. I’m back. I will be keeping a copy of my project in NetBeans format so I can try it out when a new version comes out. Hopefully Sun’s acquisition by Oracle won’t affect that team to much.

If you’re using NetBeans or Eclipse for any Java SE development, check out the community edition of IDEA. Give it a couple days, and I doubt you’ll be disappointed.