Adventures in Internet Publishing
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Week of... programming
Well, Spring Break is over now. I learned a lot about DS programming, but I haven't done anything spectacular with it. I may, in time, but I've figured that programming with SDL will be more rewarding for now.
I've started formal work on the Open Tactics Engine, however. Got a SourceForge project and everything. It'll be some time yet before I release anything interesting, but programming in SDL seems a lot more fluid than the DS or Cocoa or what have ye.
In other news, I've also clocked in a lot of time on drums in Rock Band. Getting pretty comfortable on hard mode, to the extent that it doesn't feel like much of a challenge, but I haven't gotten to Won't Get Fooled Again yet. I might invoke my alter ego and make some music :D
I've started formal work on the Open Tactics Engine, however. Got a SourceForge project and everything. It'll be some time yet before I release anything interesting, but programming in SDL seems a lot more fluid than the DS or Cocoa or what have ye.
In other news, I've also clocked in a lot of time on drums in Rock Band. Getting pretty comfortable on hard mode, to the extent that it doesn't feel like much of a challenge, but I haven't gotten to Won't Get Fooled Again yet. I might invoke my alter ego and make some music :D
Labels: drums, OTE, SDL, the Who
¶ 1:55 AM 0 Comments
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Affine Transformations
Why write your own scaling/rotation engine when the hardware has one built in?
I've been slugging through Patater's DS Programming Tutorial. It covers the concept pretty well, though I think his code is a bit too complex just to show off the basic features of the handheld. On the other hand, it sets you up for much more advanced programming, so I can't really complain.
Work is underway to better understand the Nintendo DS and move some of my game programming endeavors over. This time I'll try a more direct approach, since the hardware takes care of a lot of the organization; I don't have to write a general purpose engine before I can get to the fun stuff.
I have Spring Break before me, too, and I've declared it a week of DS programming. Here's hoping I can keep myself on track!
Edit: WOW YOU CAN TOTALLY SEE ME REFLECTED IN THE DS ¶ 1:35 PM 0 Comments
Why write your own scaling/rotation engine when the hardware has one built in?
I've been slugging through Patater's DS Programming Tutorial. It covers the concept pretty well, though I think his code is a bit too complex just to show off the basic features of the handheld. On the other hand, it sets you up for much more advanced programming, so I can't really complain.
Work is underway to better understand the Nintendo DS and move some of my game programming endeavors over. This time I'll try a more direct approach, since the hardware takes care of a lot of the organization; I don't have to write a general purpose engine before I can get to the fun stuff.
I have Spring Break before me, too, and I've declared it a week of DS programming. Here's hoping I can keep myself on track!
Edit: WOW YOU CAN TOTALLY SEE ME REFLECTED IN THE DS ¶ 1:35 PM 0 Comments
Monday, March 10, 2008
The High Cost of Industrialism
So I'm drowning in caffeine right now.
In this drug-fueled moment of clarity, it's obvious that caffeine is the grease that made the industrial revolution possible. You need loads of caffeine to keep up with modern studies and workflows. All the "competent" people I know are severe coffee or energy drink addicts, which leads me to believe that caffeine-free go-getters are freaks of nature.
Caffeine, however, also highlights some of the inequities of this industrial age. Living "close to the Earth" is becoming less and less possible, as bigger corporations take up more land to grow more food, using less labor and feeding more and more people. We've transitioned from a lifestyle where people mostly took care of themselves and made all their food and possessions (medieval), shifting more and more of the cottage industry to factories, until now everything a person needs to survive has to be purchased, using money.
Now, there's two major problems with purchasing 100% of the means of life. First being, the amount of overhead it incurs. Objects have to be manufactured somewhere, then they must be transported to a retail location, and the retailer has to store it and manage a staff to sell it. Granted, I'm probably missing some key pieces of the puzzle here, but this is just a rant; anyway, I have to wonder if this method is actually any more efficient than in-home production.
The other problem is that different types of labor earn very different wages, even though the amount of time spent is exactly the same. A retail job will just barely earn the minimum wage, which, in most places, is enough money to cover rent for an apartment (with roommates) and some dried noodles. Maybe enough gasoline to keep an automobile running. This forces many people working at minimum wage jobs to work two or three jobs, rocketing the work-week to well over 40 hours.
Skilled labor is another matter, often earning several times the wages of an unskilled job. Workers at this level can live "comfortably," though the proportion of people working "on-call" is somewhat alarming at this point. So, this "middle class" also seems to be overworked. On the other hand, they have enough money to purchase resources to raise a family and support "quality of living" activities such as vacationing and entertainment.
Now, this labor of the lower classes, which isn't apparently paying for their well-being, has to be going somewhere, and the only place I can see is the wealthy. Our labor, driving profits for people who don't always have to work as hard, lines their pockets and pays for "luxury goods," such as oversized houses, ridiculously expensive cars, and unproductive technical gadgets. Or it goes into cruise tickets and hotel stays. The problem is that much of this luxury comes off the backs of the people who have to work longer hours to earn a fraction of the wages.
I'm not entirely sure how it all works, but I'm not an economist. All I really have to go on is that Europeans work less and yet have a much higher GDP per capita. I mainly attribute that to better regulation of the industry and a better balance between imports and exports (America imports far too much). How the macroeconomic level affects the personal, I'm not entirely sure.
My current research, as well as my gut instinct, is telling me that the world we have now is all a farce. There's got to be a better way to live than money, or at least a better way of getting it. A way that doesn't involve the standard channels, which only serve to worsen the imbalance of rich and poor.
The best methods I can think of revolve around "going off the economic grid," analogous to producing your own electricity. Reduce expenses as much as possible. Use your body to get places, rather than funding the oil cartels. Room with people; it maximizes the space you pay for, which by far the biggest expense. Cooking your own food is cheaper and healthier than buying pre-cooked meals. Make your own clothes, or buy secondhand. Same for furniture.
Now, you might think, that's a lot more work. Maybe. But it adds variety, which for many, can make life less dull. Also, who said television requires your undivided attention, anyway? Cook during your favorite shows or whatever.
To pull in money from the outside, well... I'm still working on that one. Best idea so far is to take advantage of "the long tail" and sell physical goods over the internet. Or at your swap meet. Or you could join a band, if that's your schtick.
Rant too long. I'll do a part two when I'm less wired. As a parting note, I've been turning a lot of my attention lately towards learning how things are made. There's a reason so many 19th-century goods were made out of brass: it's really easy to work!
¶ 1:26 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Super Secret API Calls
Technically, I'm not supposed to touch it, but SDL_gfx uses it for its scaling. I have no idea how stable or fast it is, though I can always write my own using the Bresenham algorithm.
Found this little gem in the SDL_video header:
Technically, I'm not supposed to touch it, but SDL_gfx uses it for its scaling. I have no idea how stable or fast it is, though I can always write my own using the Bresenham algorithm.Speaking of, I still need to implement a rotation algorithm. Might skip it for a while, though, since the Nintendo DS does it in hardware. We'll see.
¶ 12:11 AM 0 Comments
Saturday, March 01, 2008
A Taste of Deselberg
So I have a couple of websites I'm not developing, silver.datamachine.net and ikkakujyu.googlepages.com. Both are freebies, and both are just sitting there, because I can't really decide on anything to put up just yet.
Problem being that there's too much junk in my head. Characters, half-finished plots, much of an attempt at a historically-realistic but slightly fantastical world, music, code snippets, etc. Difficult to actually finish anything without deadlines or substantial external motivation. Sigh.
However, I've been playing with the idea of arranging everything around cities, since that's generally how I think about story and plot; i.e., the website would be a simple portal that shows icons of different cities, and you click one to see all the stories, character bios, pictures, and whatever I have that relates. I'd start with "Deselberg," my oldest and most developed city, and see where it goes from there.
Need to get better at drawing, though :( ¶ 11:56 PM 0 Comments
Problem being that there's too much junk in my head. Characters, half-finished plots, much of an attempt at a historically-realistic but slightly fantastical world, music, code snippets, etc. Difficult to actually finish anything without deadlines or substantial external motivation. Sigh.
However, I've been playing with the idea of arranging everything around cities, since that's generally how I think about story and plot; i.e., the website would be a simple portal that shows icons of different cities, and you click one to see all the stories, character bios, pictures, and whatever I have that relates. I'd start with "Deselberg," my oldest and most developed city, and see where it goes from there.
Need to get better at drawing, though :( ¶ 11:56 PM 0 Comments
