So I think it’s fair to say things have been pretty dead around here recently. Well, that’s about to change very shortly. 
Should be quite the surprise…
Change is coming
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Category Archives: General
Wild times
So I’ve been having some pretty wild times as of late which is my only excuse for not updating this. My goal of getting three posts a week turned into a post a month, if I was lucky. Rather then continue to insist on utterly perfect posts, I’m just going to throw things up and see if they stick. ^_^
Going to keep this short with a quick summary of what I’ve been up too.
- Got a job at Wendy’s as a sandwich maker
- Got a job as a server admin for a major Minecraft server host
- Got an offer to move on with a couple friends in Indianapolis which I’m aiming to do
- Put in my two weeks for Wendy’s in preparation of my move
- Started getting traction with an online community I’m forming called BiosHub
- Continued planning conventions and website ideas
Short, but a pretty solid summary. I won’t bother promising I’ll write more often, but I’m thinking of integrating with Google+ so it’s a little more lively at least.
“Leaders Are People Who Go Their Own Way Without Looking to See if Anyone Is Following”
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“Leaders are not what many people think–people with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see whether anyone is following them. ‘Leadership qualities’ are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. The include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, determination, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head even when things are going badly. This is the opposite of the ‘charisma’ that we hear so much about.” - John Holt
Links for Thought #1
Decided I’d post a couple of the articles I’ve found particularly interesting today.
Freegamer: the challenges of developing long, plot-heavy FOSS games – Can you make a long plot-based FOSS game? I tend to think you can, but really this article reaches stronger then just plot-heavy games. Can you make ‘any’ hyper-detailed game and expect to be successful without being a AAA title?
Some thoughts on Copyright Assignment by Michael Meeks – This is a really good article about Copyright Assignment and some of the pros and cones associated with them. It’s surprisingly neutral, although the author isn’t a fan of Copyright Assignment.
Naming posts and other stuff
So I’ve decided to think up new ways to write updates. One of the things that seems to slow my writing is actually deciding what to title posts. I only noticed just today that another project, Dwarf Fortress, writes short news blurbs every 2-3 days and I’ve looked over how exactly they do it.
Most of the posts are by one person. They’re usually bulleted lists of bugs fixed and different updates, sometimes accompanied by a paragraph or so explaining what’s been going on. Post titles are simply the date, only changed for releases in which case it’s the version number + the date.
These rather short updates are easy to digest and while they’re usually not terribly in-depth, they prove the project is active and present the image of someone who actually cares about his community.
So do I have a point in writing about this? I’m going to try a similar approach. Go for two or three paragraphs a post on whatever happens to be going on, hopefully every two or three days. We’ll see how it goes.
We are not enemies, but friends
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. - Abraham Lincoln, from his First Inaugural Address.
February Website Revamp
This seems to be a monthly occurrence, but hopefully this will do the trick. Yet again, I’ve chosen to revamp the site and change the website to Drupal. Beside the obvious style changes, It will allow me to easily create separate areas on the website for different topics. This seems important to me because of how many drastically different topics I want to write about. From Cosplay to Anime/Manga to Photography to Art, Programming, Writing and assorted other things, it’s important to allow people who only care about one of these to see just them.
I’ll be working for the next couple hours and then continuing work tomorrow to bring back previous content and get some photos back online. So I hope everyone enjoys! Leave a comment if you have any requests, I’ll be sure to get to all of them that I can.
Three new 360 games
I’ve been lacking in posts recently, and the reason is I just got three new Xbox 360 games. Mass Effect 2, Resident Evil 5 and Red Faction: Guerrilla thanks to Gamestop’s “Buy two used games, get one free” deal. I’ll probably be writing reviews on all three but I’ll write super-short ones here for as far as I’ve gotten.
Mass Effect 2
Actually planning to return it to get a VGA cable instead and buy it new instead. Buying it used is a bit of a ripoff as it’s only two dollars less, minus DLC. Why a VGA cable? The text is too bloody small without an HDTV. Bioware claims it’s a design decision, and because of this I no longer have much respect for them. If you make a mistake, you admit it, you don’t pretend it was on purpose. If I’m actually able to read it on my LCD screen however, it’s a great game.
Resident Evil 5
Resident Evil 4 with a new paint job. Not really a bad thing, but not ‘great’ either. Mostly fun, although I’m not really happy that they didn’t return to a city/mansion environment. Personally I like them better, but that said, it doesn’t really ruin the game. It’s not really hard, but it is pretty fun for sure.
Red Faction: Guerrilla
If you like blowing stuff up and driving through buildings, get it. Otherwise, don’t bother. Basically the entire game is all around blowing up buildings with awesome physics. It’s fun, really fun for short arcade-style gameplay. Otherwise, it does get a tad dull.
Managing Tasks
Keep track of tasks has always been something of a pain for me. It’s not always that I don’t know what needs done, but getting that information out of my head and into a format that someone else can understand can be difficult. I’ve recently been attempting to find a solution for CubeCreate and have come to a few conclusions.
Nothing will be perfect. So don’t even try. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t strive for quality, but don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Managing the list should not take long. This is very simple, but also very important. Don’t spend too much time updating your list. It should be easy and quick to update to both encourage you to use it and let you get back to the work that needs done as quickly as possible.
Why is a task list important? Because otherwise people don’t know what you’re doing and what needs done. Every project, even single-developer projects need a task list, if for no other reason then to prevent feature creep. If you were to stop working, or go on vacation, who would takeover? If you’re the only one who knows what needs done, it’ll take days for another developer to figure out what you were trying to do.
I’ve kept this list as short as possible, and only touched on the highlights to keep from boring people. For CubeCreate, we’re currently using a wiki page as our project-wide task list. It works well enough, and while I think a more polished solution would be better, it’s not worth the energy it would take to develop one.
Hopefully this has helped. What task management system would you recommend? Leave me a comment and let me know.
Christmas 2010
Merry Christmas! I figured it was mandatory to write some kind of happy cheerful Christmas post today so here it goes. Today I had lunch with my parents and spent some required family time opening presents and talking. Then the Christmas movies came on, so I decided to abandon ship and watch some anime instead. But which anime? Perhaps something with a Christmas theme like Love Hina? Well sadly I don’t happen to have any, but I’ve found something that is strangely just as enjoyable and heartwarming.
The Twelve Kingdoms. It no real relation to the holidays and honestly I’m not sure why I like it as much as I do, but the characters are well developed and it has a plot, which, while not exactly earth-shattering, still manages to break the mold and feels very unique and magical.
The quick summary is this: A high school girl is brought to another world and dropped into a world of samurai and yoma. I honestly can’t say too much without giving away the plot, but It’s important to stick with it a few episodes to let it grow on you, because the beginning is a tad confusing at times.
With that, I think I’ll get back to watching it. I hope everyone has a great day. Please leave a comment if you know of any good holiday-themed anime/manga you’d recommend!
