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- January 19, 2005
Five of Ten
January 19, 2005Read moreI’ve queued up 5 game programming projects for this year so far:
- The ActiveEdge Winteractive, which I’m finalizing code for right now
- The resurrection of Crixa
- A Flash conversion of a game programmed by my cousin Ben Loh, originally created in RealBasic
- A collaboration with the “cool” Brad Fitzpatrick, Illustrator / Cartoonist. Not that other guy.
- There are also some tools on Ingeeni’s Website that look interesting, so I want to see what’s up with them. Looks like an interesting 2.5D sprite technology for Flash.
I’m also evaluating some cross platform third party game engines for C# development…more on that later. So many tools. So little time.
- January 19, 2005
Stupidless Computing
January 19, 2005Read moreThe idea of “stupidless computing” came to me in the car this morning while returning Diane’s PC. Has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? I felt a tremendous desire to do something about this.
- January 19, 2005
Bruce Lee Ultra-Interactive
January 19, 2005Read more
Stumbled upon I Know Where Bruce Lee Lives, the “ultra-interactive kung-fu remixer“. It’s a Flash toy that allows you to sequence audio and visual clips together. Delivers a lot of oomph for a relatively simple bit of interactive technology. It again shows that content and design is king, not fancy shmancy programming. Bruce Lee kick programmer’s butt any day of week!
An interesting feature is the sequencer, which allows you to save your “mix” for playback, though not to an MP3.
- January 18, 2005
Let the Games Begin!
January 18, 2005Read more
Last year I started to transition away from graphic design to programming, writing a couple ActionScript 2.0 based Flash apps. To maintain momentum, my pledge for 2005 is to make 10 games. They might be crappy, short, or ugly, but each game will provide an opportunity to learn something about game theory versus implementation. I’ve got game theory in spades…implementation (that is, code) is where the rubber meets the road.
- January 17, 2005
Buy Macs for your Parents, Please
January 17, 2005Read moreAs I type, I’m de-lousing a Windows PC for Diane. running it through the usual spyware / virus check isolated from the network. The complaint was that it no longer was able to connect to the Internet through NetZero. I can see why…on startup, it loaded a number of interesting resident spyware programs, all attempting to contact the network, eating CPU and memory. And since it was a minimum-spec PC with only 128MB of memory (Windows XP seems to like a minimum of 256MB), it was causing incredible slow down.
On top of the spyware situation, there was an equally crass collection of vendor-installed trialware, marketing presentations, and links to shopping websites. Everyone one of them demanding you click on them, and then trying to sell you a subscription or update before you could do anything. It is unforgivable.
I saw the same thing on my Dad’s new HP laptop…tons and tons of crapware and quick-expiring trials that constantly popped up dialog boxes to BUY BUY BUY, with no option to uninstall the offending package.
My aunt Hui-chin is going through similar trauma with her Windows XP laptop, which I’m trying to diagnose long distance with no less than three of her children. The logitech web cam software is conflicting with something else, which is causing the camera software to fail, and on top of that nothing in the computer quite works right. She has one of those annoying popups also, with some service failing on bootup and unhelpfully informing the user of this every few minutes. What crap!
These observations have lead me to the following conclusion:
Buying a PC and giving it to your parents is bound to result in heartbreak and misery for all involved.
With the advent of the $499 Macintosh, I don’t see any reason to NOT get a Mac unless you’re already tech-savvy, are a developer, are forced to use certain PC applications or VPN software for work, or are a rabid PC gamer. If you’re not one of the above, then you owe it to yourself to go to the nearest Apple Store and try out a Mac.
I may get a Mac Mini just to loan to people so they can try it out and realize that it’s a good thing.
