robert w rose .com

Blogger shuts down FTP publishing

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:34:00 +0000

This may be my last post for a while. Blogger has announced they're soon going to be shutting down FTP publishing.

I knew this day would come. I always thought it was kinda ridiculous they allowed FTP publishing. It frequently breaks and it doesn't generate them any revenue.

I guess I'm gonna have to install wordpress. Figuring out how to import my 300+ posts over the last 8 years will be interesting.

Bigelow English Teatime

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:06:00 +0000

Water: 6oz
Time: 3 min
Milk: 2oz

Verdict: Mild and pleasant, with an oak-like aftertaste. Very agreeable. Takes milk well, giving it a slightly creamier texture. Will definitely drink again.

Trader Joe's English Breakfast

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:12:00 +0000

Water: 6oz
Time: 3min
Milk: 2oz

Verdict: Stale. Old. Bitter with very little flavor. Does not take milk well at all; texture becomes watery like an herbal tea. I would consider taking it back to the store had I not paid only $2 for it.

Installing Ubuntu 9.10 desktop w/ software RAID + LVM

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:48:00 +0000

I have 4 hard drives in my system and I've been running them with RAID 1 pairs tied together using LVM. The first couple GB of each are set aside for /boot and swap space.

I was running Debian and I wanted to try Ubuntu, but Ubuntu Desktop out-of-box doesn't support this kind of configuration. Ubuntu Server advertises LVM support, but for whatever reason didn't recognize my configuration. I probably could have recreated the same configuration w/ Ubuntu Server's installer, but I didn't want to risk losing my data and then discovering it doesn't actually support it.

Finally after some trial and error I figured out the Ubuntu Alternate distribution has LVM and software RAID support if you run it in "expert" mode. It was a bit of a pain to manually walk it through the installer, but eventually it recognized my existing drive configuration. Definitely not the "friendly" Ubuntu installation experience I was hoping for, but it worked.

When the install was done it left me with a console-only bare-bones install. But since I had the Ubuntu Desktop CD handy, I popped it in the drive and ran:

apt-cdrom add
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

...and away it went.

Carfax "1-owner" doesn't mean 1 owner

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:55:00 +0000

I've been car shopping lately and have come across two instances where the car is advertised as a "Carfax 1-owner" vehicle, but the car has actually had two owners. Carfax.com does in fact report 1 owner, but when checking the vehicle with Experian AutoCheck, they report 2 owners. In one case I was actually able to determine Experian was the one that was correct, because the dealership had all of the sales records for the car in the glove box.

Don't trust Carfax.

Comcast buyout of NBC highlights two issues

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:44:00 +0000

Coverage I've read of the story focuses on Comcast having an unfair advantage over other ISPs, or vertical integration gains they'll make by joining forces with NBC. But there are two other things I wish were being discussed:

1) Net neutrality. Unfair advantage over other ISPs would be a non-issue if we had decent net neutrality laws in place. There would be no risk of Comcast abusing their power (by slowing down video feeds from other providers).

2) Broadband as a public utility. I strongly believe that broadband should be regulated as a public utility, just like power and water. The fact that Comcast has grown so large that they can drop $14B on another company is unbelievable. They have no competition on cable Internet like the DSL providers do, because cable Internet doesn't use the phone lines--which are regulated as a public utility--so they've been able to overcharge subscribers. If this system were fixed the Comcast purchase of NBC would also be a non-issue.

Google Voice + Gizmo = Fail

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:11:00 +0000

The 72 hour "free phone service" experiment has failed. Only about 1 in 3 outgoing calls actually have worked. Call quality is terrible. Frequent drops. Sometimes the line will start doing a "fast busy" in the middle of the conversation. About 1 in 3 times I reboot my ATA it just flat-out can't connect Gizmo.

But the most frustrating thing is Google Voice's "Call" interface doesn't tell you what's going on. It just says "Now connecting...", which would be fine if it actually connected. When there's an error, or your phone never rings, you're left there wondering what the hell happened.

Swine flu H1N1 numbers

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:36:00 +0000

New data released last week from the CDC:

22M infections in the US so far

98,000 hospitalizations

3900 deaths

Therefore:

0.445% of the population who gets swine flu requires hospitalization, or about 1 in 220

0.0177% of people who get swine flu die from it, or about 1 in 5600

Children only:

8M infections

36,000 hospitalizations

540 deaths

Therefore:

0.45% of children who get swine flu require hospitalization, or about 1 in 220

0.00675% of children who get swine flu die from it, or about 1 in 15,000

I wonder how they come up the 22M and 8M. I was sick with something bad last week. I thought, "no way it's swine flu." But I looked up the symptoms for swine flu, and I actually met the symptoms. (Which are basically, "it's like the flu"). It wasn't until seeing these numbers I thought, "well maybe I did have swine flu". There are 304M people in the US, so 7% of the population has already gotten it.

If you go through the old CDC data it appears the flu typically peaks in February, so we might be a ways from hitting the peak of H1N1.

The Case for a Creator

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:41:00 +0000

I stumbled across the video "The Case for a Creator", which claims to be a scientific explanation of why "science" proves the existence of God and creationism. I found it very entertaining on a number of levels.

The video presents science from microbiology to astrobiology. At every step of the way, the science that is presented is used to dispute Darwin's Theory of Evolution. It's comical, laugh-out-loud funny; the leaps in logic are pretty astounding.

But something occurred to me while watching it that I hadn't known how to articulate before: why can't evolution and intelligent design be compatible? If you accept, as the video supposes, that an intelligent designer constructed bacteria that later ("suddenly") turned into complex multi-celled organisms, presumably at the hands of this intelligent designer, why can't you accept the intelligent designer designed evolution?

Simple rules, when combined and run over time with the right initial conditions, create complex and unexpected behaviors. Chaos Theory and Intelligent Design design combine to make Evolution? Any takers?

Just teach your kids God guided evolution and then we can all get along.

Great corporate mantras

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:04:00 +0000

I stumbled across this blog entry on the IBM corporate mantra from years-gone-by: THINK. That's it. Just "think".

It got me "think"ing about my experience at Hewlett-Packard when I was in and just-out-of college. I really bought into The HP Way while I was there. I still think about it to this day.

Are these corporate mantras distilling the visions of their respective companies for their employees, or are they cleverly disguised brainwashing exercises designed to trick you into feeling good about your work? While I know people that would say they are the latter, I opt for the former. And I present as a reason for this the argument that they aren't used anymore.

Nowadays, when a company tries to "invent" a new mantra for itself, it's not taken seriously. (See what I just did there?) It might be naive to say that mantras have to come from the founder(s) of the company, but I'm not aware of any modern company that's been able to create a new mantra for itself, one that inspires employees and invokes the greater good. It's got to be built into the fabric of the company.

Will we have another HP or IBM in this country?

Cash for clunkers, what a horrible idea

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:43:00 +0000

"This crisis was created by an excess of debt... how should we fix it? MORE DEBT."

On some level that makes sense, but this direct application--encouraging more consumer loans for car purchases--just seems idiotic on so many levels.

Not to mention the environmental impact. The lack of reuse. No recycling of working vehicles. The CARS bill mandates the vehicle be destroyed by the dealer.

When I first learned about this program I spent a great deal of time analyzing the different ways I could trade-in my 20 year-old vehicle to get a new car. I'd love to have a new car, but the more I thought about it, the worse I felt about it. My 1990 Pathfinder is a perfectly workable vehicle. It's got low miles, runs well, and is a pretty comfortable ride. It just seems ludicrous to have the vehicle scrapped.

"But I can get a new car for $4500 off, " I thought...

What if the humane society had a program where they paid you for your old dog, shot it dead, and then gave you a new puppy at a discount?

The cash for clunkers program sets my inner environmental pragmatist against my inner economist. I hate you lawmakers that signed this bill, I hate you. (shakes fist)

And why single-out the automobile industry? There are a lot of other ailing industries that could use their own cash for x program.

Cash for crappers, toilet upgrade program
Cash for consoles, video game upgrade program
Cash for kittens, cat upgrade program (wasn't this an SNL sketch?)

Congratulations Apollo team

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:33:00 +0000

You're an inspiration to us all, and proof that we can do anything if we put our minds together. Thank you!

Mixed Feelings on 24Kpwn

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:07:00 +0000

The iPhone dev team announced a few days ago that the jailbreak technique they discovered for the 2nd gen iPod touch will likely work on the new iPhone 3G S. At first I was excited to hear about this.. If they can jailbreak it then it's only a matter of time until they publish an unlock and I can go back to T-Mobile prepaid. This would save me over $1000 over the next two years. As an iPhone user this is great news.

But as an iPhone developer, this is very sad news. If you can jailbreak your phone then you can run unsigned code on it, which means you'll be able to pirate games on the 3G S.

Now I'm not someone to whine about piracy. That would make me a massive hypocrite. But growing up in an age when tty spoofing and blue boxes still worked has given me a bit of a nuanced view on piracy (and security systems in general). I don't think it should be illegal for people hack systems in order to gain greater access to them, or to utilize the fruits of their work to break intellectual property laws (which need overhauling anyways). But I do think it should be the right of intellectual property holders and security system developers to do everything they can to prevent people from gaining access to their systems and utilizing their work in new and different ways than they intended.

So back when Apple first launched the App Store it was happy days for everyone. You could run homebrew code unsigned using a variety of pwn tools, but you could also pay for software through the App Store--and this paid software could only be ran on devices that it was digitally signed to run on. But then the hackers figured out a way to effectively unsign signed apps and then you could run a paid application on any phone. I'm not saying this is wrong. It's just sad that Apple's encryption was defeated.

I was hoping the 3G S would turn the tides back in the IP holder's favor, making it impossible--at least for a short time--to run apps that weren't signed specifically for you on your phone. I mean, eventually it needs to happen (duh!) but I was hoping it would be another year, or at least another 6-9 months.

So I have mixed feelings. I wish they would release a baseband exploit that frees us from the tyranny of AT&T and not a jailbreak that allows people to pirate my one dollar game. But I seriously doubt the holders of these exploits will be that generous. :-)

Update: Shoutout to the guys on the iPhone Games Network who discussed this post on a recent podcast. I wouldn't quite say I'm "pleading" with the hacker community to not release a jailbreak (afaik you need the jailbreak in order to apply the baseband exploit anyways), I'm just saying it would be incredibly awesome of them to release a baseband crack that doesn't jailbreak your phone. :-) And quite honestly, I think Apple would feel the same way. They probably hate AT&T more than the rest of us combined--it was pretty obvious in their WWDC talks there was some friction there.

Bork3D Game Engine for iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:35:00 +0000

I've decided to put the foundation I wrote for Anytime Golf up for sale. I'm calling it the Bork3D Game Engine. I think I can carve out a niche in the iPhone engine space for programmer-types with high expectations of the hardware that want a solid foundation on which to build their game. There are other options out there but I believe most game developers look at those and fear (rightfully so, I hear) that those other options won't meet their performance criteria.

Selling a game engine is an interesting thing. �I think the Unity folks have a good business model: they're clearly targeting non-programmer types who want to put together something 3D quickly. �Torque has their iTGB offering that's similar. �There's a good deal of money to be made there. �Unfortunately it doesn't produce great games. (Oh no he didn't!) OK in fairness these engines produce awesome games on PC. They are awesome PC engines. I'm a licensed Torque user and I love it. They're just not mobile engines.

The Bork3D Game Engine was built for mobile platforms. It actually has it's roots in Rude Engine that I wrote for Vector Blaster, and can run on Pocket PC, Symbian and N-Gage in addition to iPhone. But it isn't a complete game engine by any stretch of the imagination. If you want in-game content creation tools and a scripting language please leave. However if you want to build in-game content creation tools and install your favorite scripting language, c'mon in!

So what do you get?

All the source code

OpenGL ES abstraction layer

Debug-rendering API

Component-oriented game object system

High-performance static and boned mesh rendering system w/ tool pipeline for 3dsmax and Maya

Decorator system for rendering billboards

Texture manager w/ tool pipeline

Runtime "tweaker" for changing game variables via a web browser

User interface widgets w/ abstractions for handling iPhone user input

Font renderer w/ tool pipeline for generating fonts (supports unicode)

In-game profiler

Audio system for sound effects and background music

Integration with the Bullet Physics SDK

Unit test framework

And what does it cost? I'm selling it for only $49 (if you're indy). Fourty-nine bucks. That's a lot of code for not much. I'm probably crazy. I guess I'm softening as I grow older, considering this is 1/15th what I was selling Rude Engine for a few years ago.

See bork3d.com for more information.

There are also threads on TouchArcade and iphonedevsdk.com about the engine.

Anytime Golf now $0.99

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:04:00 +0000

My game Anytime Golf is now only $0.99!

Although getting the word out about the game has been challenging (a lot more challenging than last year with my first iPhone game), folks who have found the game seem to have great things to say about it. Here's a selection:

"A quality game of golf... cracking 3D graphics and realistic physics... hard not to recommend." AppGamer.net

"I am struck by the amazing 3D graphics that you see in this app, but this is more than just a beautiful game... The interface is easy to navigate and the game play is a load of fun... If you love golf you would be missing out big-time if you didn't give Anytime Golf a try." iPhoneAppsFinder.com

"Great 3D graphics and excellent game play make this a very addictive app." iPhoneNess.com

"The holes are really well designed... The physics are superb... The graphics are among the best on the iPhone. A+" App Store reviewer

You can purchase Anytime Golf on the App Store here.

Vector Blaster remix includes more awesomeness; cowbell

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:17:00 +0000

Mick Rippon, the guy who wrote the music for my iPhone game, Vector Blaster, just linked me to a remix he's working on of the theme song from the game, "Tomorrow's Mistake". It's teh awesome. And it includes what is essential for just about every musical endeavor: more cowbell!

Link

PSP Go hands-on

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:41:00 +0000

I got to play with the new PSP Go today at E3, here's my thoughts.

It's small, and it's thin. Like, cramp your hands thin. It's obviously designed with little kids in mind. I think the space between the face and the back is less than a half inch. On top of that, all of the face buttons are drawn in closer to each other.. I only got to play it for about 10 minutes but the whole time I had ergonomic concerns.. I don't think I would last more than 30-45 minutes on it tops.

The screen is smaller. The large screen I thought was the original PSP's best feature. It was comfortable to play games and watch video on the PSP. Why change that?

It looks great and has a solid feel to it. Sony build quality you would expect. Well, not entirely. The face buttons feel a bit more fragile, but I thought the original PSP's buttons felt fragile until I got used to them.

But $249? For reals? The device is cheaper to manufacture than the old PSP (I assume, since it lacks a UMD drive and has a smaller screen), and you're charging more for it? In this economy? With very little new content coming on PSP in 2009? OK.. whatever.. I'm just asking.

And yes, still no second-analog stick. Why? I have no idea. But seriously. Why? There's room for it on the front panel. Gamers want the second-analog. Developers want the second-analog. Everyone wants the second analog. Give the people what they want.

AMD launches website celebrating anti-trust victory over Intel

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:25:00 +0000

I'm not sure exactly why, but I find this disturbing.

Never-mind poor sportsmanship. You just threw out all opportunity for an out-of-court settlement should the appeal not go in your favor.

At the end of the day, do you think consumers really care? Processors aren't like shoes or lead-based toys. I don't care how they get in my computer, I just want them to be fast an reliable. You'll get exactly three anti-Intel geeks to rally to your cause and the rest of us will just scratch our heads... huh?

Subversion woes

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:31:00 +0000

In the version control world, I'm a big fan of perforce. I first became a fan when I saw how fast it was--it can perform checkouts of gigabyte-sized repositories extremely fast. I also really liked the perforce workflow--changelists are the "normal" way of working. However I started to love perforce when I began playing with it's branching capabilities. It's ridiculously easy to create and integrate branches, and they have wonderful tools for helping you understand branches.

At my new workplace we're on svn, and while I wouldn't say I "hate" it... That's a pretty strong word... I am "very displeased."

Speed isn't so much of an issue here because we're only dealing with megabyte-sized repositories, so a minute or two to checkout ~100mb or so isn't too painful. The svn workflow has taken some getting used too. Nobody works with svn changelists--there are no good tools for managing changelists so it's wasted effort. It's easier to just do another checkout of the repository and work in there. Since our repository here is relatively small this is no big deal. (I couldn't imagine what it would be like with a larger repository! Yikes.)

Branching in svn is downright painful. I suppose if you had nothing but text files running on one operating system and everything was in one flat directory structure you might say, "What are you talking about? It's so easy!" but so far that hasn't been my experience. Here are the problems I've encountered:

Merging subdirectories instead of merging from the root. Apparently this is a known "no-no" according to the Subversion book. I made the "mistake" of merging a subdirectory a few revisions back and now whenever I merge from the root it wants to re-merge all the files in those subdirectories every single time. It marks their properties as modified even though they're not being changed. Maybe this is just svnmerge.py being diligent but it's annoying to see this massive list of files every time I merge, when really the "meat" of the merge is in just a handful of separate files. Weak sauce.
Merging eol-style properties. There's a known bug in svn 1.5.0-1.5.4 where if you make eol-style changes to a branch and you try and merge that to another branch you may get a "inconsistent newlines in /tmp/tmp" error. I encountered this and the only way I could figure out how to get around it was to upgrade to svn 1.5.6, make the eol-style changes in the branch, commit, then perform the merge. I then had to downgrade back to svn 1.5.1 because 1.5.6 couldn't deal with the branched subdirectories I mentioned previous. I'd see an "Error reading spooled REPORT request response" message when it got to those subdirectories that had been previously merged.
Merging inconsistent newlines. Really? This problem arrises because svn stores on the server whatever newlines you give it. I can't think of any reason why the svn server would not store files as 'eol-style=native' on the server by default. It seems like storing the client's newline format on the server is an exceptional case, not the common case. It's irritating to have to merge newline inconsistencies.

I miss perforce. Somebody needs to develop "poorforce", a cheap version of perforce. :-)

Anytime Golf: Magic Touch now available on the App Store

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:18:00 +0000

My game Anytime Golf: Magic Touch just went up for sale on the App Store.

Marketing speak:

Great golf anytime, anywhere!

Stunning graphics: Enjoy highly detailed modeling displayed in smooth interactive 3D. You will agree--this is one of the best looking games on iPhone!

Intuitive interface: Slide your finger down across the touch surface to perform your backswing, then flick up for the downswing. Your skill and grace controls the power and accuracy of your shot!

Tournament mode: Unlock new challenges by competing in 9 and 18 hole competitions. There are 6 challenges total!

Practice mode: Not up for a full 9 or 18? Hit the driving range and hone your game!

Anytime Golf: The most realistic golf experience for iPhone!

Click here to purchase!

Anytime Golf: Magic Touch's Facebook Page

New screenshots of Anytime Golf online

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:32:00 +0000

Screenshots from the final version of Anytime Golf are now available on bork3d.com. Check em out!

Anytime Golf: Magic Touch nearing completion

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:56:00 +0000

My game Anytime Golf: Magic Touch (to be released under the label Bork3d Games) is almost ready for the App Store. I've been working on this project for quite a while with a very talented games-industry friend, Jake Helms. When we started we set out to create the best looking, most intuitive and most fun golf title for iPhone, and I think we hit those marks. We've spent a lot of time squeezing framerate out of the device and pushing polys to their limits (in some scenes we're well into the thousands). Our touch-based swing mechanic has gone through numerous iterations in an effort to create something with depth and sophistication but that you can still pick up in 2 seconds.

And we think it's pretty damn fun. It has that "barely out of reach" quality we were looking for, where, like bowling and other (real life) sports games, just when you think you've mastered it you slip a tad and mis-execute. I find when I play it I start to become over-confident after a while and the game bitch-slaps me back in place. The moment I knew we found "it" was when I was on the 9th hole, one under par, and my finger was trembling because I was so nervous about screwing up the final putt.

Working on the game has been fun too in it's own way. Every experiment we've ran or tweak to a mechanic has uncovered more and more ideas to try. But sadly there comes a time when you just have to call it "done". There's a lot more we could do on this game (we have a huge list we've been tracking) but we're saving it for version 2. There's only so much two guys can do. :-)

iPhone Games Network has posted a video on their website of the first hole. Look for the final game soon on the App Store!

Computers Take Flight

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:17:00 +0000

Much has been written and re-enacted of the trials NASA experienced putting people in space--but the focus is usually on the astronauts, the faces we put on space travel. Some attention has been paid to the propulsion pioneers and the rocket engineers that made it possible, but rarely do you hear about the software jocks that wrote the code to run the rockets.

I had searched for a while for a text that gave the software perspective on the space missions and had given up. Today I came across just such a text almost by accident: Computers Take Flight: A History of NASA's Pioneering Digital Fly-By-Wire Project. I haven't read it all yet but after reading chapter 3, "The Reliability Challenge and Software Development," I'm hooked:

"Software quickly became the main driver of cost and schedule. The techniques of making reliable hardware were know to engineers before the program began. However, ensuring software reliability was still an immature process."

Not much has changed in 40+ years.

Removing smart quotes from gcc output

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:42:00 +0000

A lot of programs can't deal with the "smart quotes" gcc prints in it's errors. If you have one program calling gcc and parsing the output, you might see something like:

foo.h:45: error: expected ��}�� at end of output

One fix I've found for this is to change the locale gcc uses for localization. You can do this using the LC_ALL environment variable (see the gcc man page). Setting its value to "C" normalizes the output to standard ASCII. In bash that's:

export LC_ALL=C

SlickEdit: Pop to active file in the project browser

noreply@blogger.com (gfm) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:58:00 +0000

One feature I've come to rely on in Visual Studio is it selects the currently active file in the project explorer. By default, SlickEdit doesn't have this functionality, but you can add it yourself. I found some kindred spirits on the SlickEdit forums that wanted the same behavior. Just add the code on the first page for showInProject() to a new .e file, then append the code on the second page for _switchbuf_auto_showInProject() to the bottom, load the .e file from the Macro -> Load Module menu, and you're set!