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The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer. |
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Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that. |
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Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood. |
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making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms. |
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Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz. |
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(Monday, August 28)
For Those Keeping Score: Microsoft =1, Eric's Productivity at Home = -1
So when I heard about 2 weeks ago that Microsoft was going to launch the XNA Coding Studio for the x360 it was the tipping point for me. I don't know what could be cooler in my mind to be able to mess around on a home console in C#. Pre 3 weeks ago I thought the x360 was certainly cool, but I didn't see a whole mass of games in genre's that I liked enough to drop half a G on a console system.
I always thought the xbox live was a service that sounds so far ahead of the online frameworks for Sony (haven't even heard that much of the details about one yet) and the Nintendo Wii (I have only heard good things about it also though from what has been said). The kicker for me was when MS announced the release of those dev tools for only around $99 they were going to give non gaming programmers the ability to homebrew on their systems (and one can only assume distribute their creations at some point). So in the back of my mind I figured I only needed to convince the wife about it and we were good to go. Luckily she was down with it so I got the x360 premium pack with NCAA College Football 2007 and Project Gotham Racing 3 for under $550. Unfortunately I had to tack on another $50 for Xbox Live access and another $50 for a component video switch (so both the cable box/x360 can utilize the 1080 for the one input I have on the tv). But all in all it has been a blast so far. The funny thing is that I think the wife has played it just as much as I have. The one thing that no one will probably believe either is that I think even with those 2 games and 2 I rented at block buster, the xbox live arcade games are the ones that have gotten the most play.
For those that don't know the x360 connects to your home network and if you have the xbox Live account, you can login and download these ~20-30 megish arcade style games from this online marketplace within the x360 framework. For one, the there are some awesome old school games that I saw and about freaked on because I played these games till my thumbs were numb when I was little. They have (and we have bought for around $3-$4 each: Street Fighter 2, Gauntlet, Hearts (Card game), Uno (which is the shit), and a couple of other lesser known tetris like games. By far I think my favorite is Uno. Nothing says fun like playing with 3 other people online at 3 am in a high stakes Uno match and shouting obscenities into your microphone because the other people are all German. All these games are online multiplayer so you are playing people from around the world, and there is a mic headset that you can put on if you want to chat with all these people. There is an online poker games that honestly feels like you sitting at a slummy vegas casino with some of the oddest people in the world telling you about their day. It is pretty wild.
One thing that I have noticed is what I would call the "perspective of competition" has changed. Growing up me and my brother would play hours upon hours against each other. Sometimes this would create animosity and frustration between us (really depended on the game of choice). Now I find that me and my wife play more as a partnership with each other against these other microphone denizens of this online world than we play against each other (and anyone who has ever played a board game with us knows that if we are not partnered each of us is gunning for the other one first :) ). This perspective may also just come with our age, (I fully plan to be throwing controllers at my television well into my 90s, I will be the only person at the old folks home who is known for their l33t powerpad skillz) so I don't know if it is directly attributed to the way the competition on the x360 network is set up, but most of the time me and wife are passing a single controller back and forth in an attempt to take out Fran in Delaware as opposed to each of us frantically pressing buttons to beat the person right beside us.
Ah well, you can expect many more posts here about the x360. Both of us are completely hooked.
Also, one more thing I can say about this system is that after buying it, my first thought was not to hack the shit out of it (which if you know me, really says something). I think I had flashed and had homebrew setup with 2 weeks of my DS, and I don't think my ps2 will ever work right again after the "rum and soldiering iron mod chip incident of 2002". I think that there are 2 huge deterrents that Microsoft has created with this system that will keep people like me from prying under the hood: a.) Price (I just paid $600 for this thing I don't want to risk ruining it) and the biggest and most unexpected b.) they have this express developer edition coming out for me to toy around with. Everyone loves to give MS shit about any new development, but I gotta say that the online framework for the x360 is very well thought out, and also giving the average programmer (and tech geeks) the tools to create their own apps to distribute is just awesome.
I also added my gamer tag to the blog on the right hand side, so if you want to add me as a friend just click on it and sign in with your xbox live login.
Update: I have had some people ask if they could add me to their xbox friends even though they don't know me in real life. The answer is sure feel free. Just don't comment on this blog when you six year old makes this 29 year old cry like a baby as I am playing Ohio State in NCAA 2007 and I am getting my butt kicked by your six year old playing UTEP. I ma not liable for what I say at that point.
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Travis - The Boy With No Name
Travis is back. I wouldn't say I hated 12 memories, it was meant to be very political, I just thought it went a little overboard and was somewhat preachy. Then when the greatest hits CD came out to be honest I was really hoping it didn't mean the end to one of my favorite brit bands. Boy With No Name is everything they were capable of. Supurb CD all the way through. Every song is brilliant. Big Chair is probably my favorite song and the opening to the CD on 3 Times is as good as it gets in music imho. |
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Pop! Why Bubbles are Great For The Economys (Gross)
One of the better economic books I have read in while, where the author gets their premise across in a well written, clear and concise manner. Basically Gross believes that the infrastructure left over after economic bubbles, provides companies with the ability to move forward (maybe more than the original bubble did). Not a hard read, I would definitely suggest it for a day and the beach/lake. |
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Feist - The Reminder
I CANNOT GET "I feel it all" OUT OF MY HEAD. Period. Great album, angelic voice. |
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Catan - Xbox Live Arcade
I am hopelessly addicted to this board-turned-video game on the xbox360. I had never played the board game but had seen it being played in some comic shops growing up. Click the Pick and play the demo, it isn't the 360 interface, but same game. |
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Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worse Nightmare
No Sophomore slump here. Just as good (if not better) than Whatever they Say. |
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Beautiful Evidence (Tufte)
Tufte reads like a text book, most people would say bleh, but the information about "information" that he can deliver is top notch. My first Tufte book was "A Visual Display To Quantitative Information" and it was extremely well done, albeit confusing at time. I think beautiful Evidence is a little easier of a read (I am still only half way through it) and a little easier for myself to understand the ideas he is presenting.. |
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Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
Fountains of Wayne are the Gods of pop music. If Welcome Interstate Managers was a collection of short stories in song form, then Traffic and Weather is an even better collection with more humor. I already feel like CNN has the hottest female anchors, imagining them throwing their lust around like the Title track to the CD makes it even better. |
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Game of Thrones (Martin)
I started this book assuming it was going to be a high fantasy novel. Elfs, Dragons, Magic and the like. It isn't. It IS fantasy but more surrounding the politics and cunning of a few high ranking families. Incest, Murder, Intrigue, unscrupulous midgets. It has it all and more. |
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson |
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