Author: grid

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nothing posting

So I finished The Amber Spyglass, and now I’m reading Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, rather than Thirteen, which I’d said I was going to start next. Stardust is shorter, and I started it on the plane to Chicago, thinking I’d get to return it to Florence’s sister Susie while we were there, rather than bring it back on the plane with us because I hadn’t finished it, which is of course what happened instead. There is also a connection between the two, as both the Phillip Pullman books and Stardust are on my “to read” pile for the same reason — I wanted to finish them before their movie counterparts are released.

I just got done uploading a few pictures from the trip to flickr, and realized they were all of people, but that we hadn’t taken any with Susie (Florence’s sister, who we spent most of Saturday visiting). I did also meet Florence’s father on Saturday too, (that was the main purpose of the trip), and that meeting went well.

We stayed with my Aunt Maureen and Uncle Michael, and my cousin Patrick, who I discovered shares my love for “casual” (mostly web-based) video games. We took turns showing each other games we like on Kongregate, and I’ll admit he took way more turns than I did. He also showed an interest in Flash game development. Too bad the program is so expensive, or I’d get him a copy for his birthday or something.

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library thing reprise

I love librarything.com. It’s really cool. I was basically just surfing around over there, trying to find the place where they post their bookpiles, (’cause I just uploaded this one) and ended up in a forum talking about what I’ve been reading lately.

Long story short, I decided it would make a good blog post, and here I am. So here’s what I’m reading lately:

I’m in the last few dozen pages of The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I’m also in the midst of A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster. I usually have a non-fiction book I’m just carrying around while I actually read a novel.

When I finish The Amber Spyglass, I intend to start reading Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan, hopefully tomorrow night.

Other books on the night side stand (ie, ones I’ve started reading, but not yet completed, or just like having near at hand): Astro City: Local Heroes, Kabuki: Metamorphosis, Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman, The Automatic Message, The Making of a Poem, ActionScript for Flash MX, Stardust (The original with illustrations by Charles Vess), Make Magazine: Issue 8, and numerous other individual comic books.

That’s about it.

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transformers

I got to see a sneak preview of the new transformers movie last night, and it transformed my dreams into a weird kaleidoscope of military landscapes. The movie itself was great! It was funnier than expected, and there were some not-so-subtle references to the cartoon that we all watched growing up. I especially liked seeing John Turturro again (he’s always great), and the cameo by Bernie Mac was fun too.

Of note is how I got the tickets for this one. They’re getting more technological in how they deliver these. For years now they’ve had you print out emails if you “win” tickets to a preview (usually from a newspaper or radio). The printouts really mean nothing, because they’re just trying to fill the seats, they don’t actually care if you won when you get to the theater. (Although, come to think of it, they’ll occasionally cross-reference with a printout of some kind.) Anyway, it’s not like they check the email’s headers or anything, and you can usually just forward your “winning” email to people and they can come too.

For this one I had to text someone. I got an automated response with another thing to text to the same number. Then they texted me back a second time letting me know they’d be picking winners the day before the preview. When tuesday came around, I got a text letting me know I’d won, and that I should show the text at the door to get in. Sure enough, they weren’t checking a list or anything, you just had to show them the text on your phone, and they let you in. They should have had more “winners” though, because the house was only about half full. This seems like an odd movie to have had so few people turn out for the preview.

Tonight is another preview for the new Harry Potter movie. Tickets for that one can be found on myspace.

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impressions and computations

OK, well, Flashbelt is done. (With the possible exception of the bar that people are going to tonight. We’ll see. It depends on what’s going on later.)

I was totally and completely blown away by the last presenter: Jared Tarbell‘s work is absolutely positively phenomenal. Words can’t really do it justice, and honestly, I don’t even think looking at the websites can do it justice. The art is good. Awesome even, but the way he creates it is what will totally blow your mind.

In the middle of the presentation, (as if, somehow, ridiculously, it wasn’t enough,) Jared gave away a few of his prints to audience members who answered various questions sprinkled he in. At some point he asked a question summing two three-digit numbers (assuming you knew the fibonacci sequence), and I wasn’t quick enough to be the first. At that point I resigned myself to not getting one of these amazing prints. But then he asked a logic question that I blurted out the answer to without thinking, and suddenly I was at the podium gratefully accepting this amazing piece of art! Highlight of the conference.

It gets better. After his presentation was a “mixer” where I stick around and talked to a bunch of people I’d met throughout the week. Eventually I was standing near Jared and thanked him again for the print. He then asked me if I’d fixed my actionscript bug. I was taken aback for a minute, not knowing what he was talking about, and then realized that he’d been sitting next to me in another panel on Monday, and had been looking over my shoulder while I was debugging the latest version of Go Tetris!. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea who it was sitting next to me at the time, and I’m pretty sure I even gave him a card.

I’m totally starstruck right now.

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flashbelt

I’m at flashbelt this week.

I’ve learned some interesting stuff thus far, but seemingly more important to the experience has been a rising sense of wonder. As tech conferences go, I’ll bet flash conferences have a lot more art than other conferences. Anyway, the best presentations have been these crazy flash artists. Their work is of course next to entirely impractical, but so interesting that these guys probably make their livings traveling from conference to conference and presenting on their art. (I’m sure this is not entirely true, Joshua Davis, for instance, has actual art showings, and of course teaches classes in what he does.)

Anyway, at some point maybe I’ll sift through all the other links I’ve collected, and post some more of them. I didn’t have internet yesterday, so all of my notes were hand-written.

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mirthless (worthless) gaming

I got together with friends and played board games a record-breaking three times this weekend. All three with a slightly different group of friends, although there were a few overlapping people at each event, I don’t think anyone else (aside from me) was at all three. All three events were fun, and I got a much needed injection of board gaming into my otherwise game-less life as of late. But I hadn’t planned on spending that much of my three-day weekend on board games.

My good friend Beth was in town, and she prompted yesterday’s game event, or I probably would have stopped after game night number two. Mostly because of the event I’m about to relate in this post. I basically want to talk about an incident that happened at that second game night. Read on for the details.

Continue reading “mirthless (worthless) gaming”

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LazyWeb wish: XML based auto ERD (in flash?)

I’d like to create my xml document, with generic items, and create some magical relationship attributes (or tree descendants), that specify where the relationships go. Seems like there should be stuff like this out there already… bonus points if it’s in flash and looks pretty. Even more bonus points if I can also specify an item’s date attribute and display the whole thing sorted by it.

Here’s the type of xml I’m currently imagining:


<item name="item 1" date="20070521">
    <relationship id="abc" />
</item>
<item name="item 2" date="20060211">
    <relationship id="abc" />
    <relationship id="123" />
</item>
<item name="item 3" date="19850101">
    <relationship id="123" />
</item>

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Go Tetris! on usgo.org

Go Tetris! was featured on usgo.org last friday, and now it’s getting a bunch more hits than it was before. The numbers are not astronomical or anything (approximately 300 that first day, and a little under a hundred per day since then), but it feels good to know there is some interest.

I sort of wish this had happened a week from now, or that I’d known it was going to happen, because I would have made more of an effort to start saving highscores and userdata. (Hopefully, I should be able to upload a new version tonight with that capability.)