A change to our vendor’s WSDL has me back to dinking around with wscompile and wsimport again. I think they’ve screwed up somewhere in their chain of a dozen XSD imports, ‘cause I’m getting “already defined” errors. I don’t dare refer to any book published before 2006 for help, because it will be flat-out wrong. Argh - so, so frustrating.
Read more...Is my Perl showing?
I copied my comment on my Enso 2.0 prototype problems to the Humanized blog, and got this reply from “Andreas”:
> It also shows why adding complexity to the system is a Bad Idea. If bad design doesn't get you, entropy will. Very true. And sounds like a Larry Wall quote. :-D
They just posted a new version of the prototype. We’ll see if it addresses any of my concerns.
Read more...agnostic kitteh...
And while finding the link to the above, I also found God’s FAQ, which for those who insist on believing is a lot more sensible that gets preached in churches:
Q: I believe that if I ask for forgiveness, you will forgive all my sins. Do you? A: Of course not. This idea was started by a church who used to sell forgiveness for cash, for Heaven's sake.Read more...
Arrrgggh! Currently getting 8.0 KB/second off my Dreamhost site. This could kill Zyps.exe downloads - 8MB could take 20 minutes. I may have a way to reduce the download size to 3MB, but even so…
Guess you do get what you pay for.
Read more...Head tracking for desktop VR displays...
I know this is no longer news, but I simply want to mark the occasion. This is literally going to be a game changer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
Read more...Well, the Enso 2.0 prototype is here...
Here’s the article…
Basically, everything that used to be [capslock][command-name] {arguments}/[capslock] is now [capslock][command-name]/[capslock]{arguments}[enter]/[enter]. About the only part I like so far is that {arguments} can have shift-characters now.
Perhaps I’m being hasty, but perhaps not. Full impressions in a few days.
Read more...Seen on the CNN news ticker...
“Studios Try to Savage TV Season”
(I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job.)
Read more...Infinite Suburbia...
So I drove around to the southern loop of the 202, the Santan Freeway, last night… It didn’t exist a couple years ago, and it’s still not connected all the way yet, but should be later this year.
I am simultaneously awestruck and horrified by how far this metro area reaches. And though it isn’t all filled in yet, it’s obvious our urban sprawl will reach the entire area the 202 encompasses, and beyond. It’s inevitable; the freeway aids and abets growth.
And you and I already knew this, but it was confirmed by what I saw last night: these are not going to be vibrant, artistic, intellectual communities. They’re going to be the same blocks of identical tract homes, interspersed with the same Super-Target-KFC-Petsmart mini malls that fill the rest of the valley. Forget about walking - it’s two miles to the corner store. Your kids will have to take up graffiti or drugs if they want accessible entertainment. And most of the people living there will have to commute all. the. way. back. to Phoenix or Scottsdale for work.
This smoggy, torrid hell is your new home. Good thing it has broadband…
Read more...Ahhhh!
Work e-mail inbox is empty. Hurray! (This should be a daily occurrence, but it happens so rarely I feel compelled to celebrate.)
Read more...Community brains...
I read an interview of a Halo 2 developer eons ago, without which I probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as I have on Zyps. It was chock full of good ideas on networking.
And now I’m using the AI bits as well… He mentioned that the enemies had to “take turns thinking” due to the XBox’s limited processing power. Basically, an AI was given a few processor cycles to size up its situation and choose its action, which it would then dumbly perform until its next turn to “think”.
Zyps is getting really slow when there are dozens of creatures with 5-7 behaviors each on the screen. It’s time to assess splitting up my processor time as well.
Right now the plan is to add Behavior#condition_frequency, which will take an integer. If you set behavior.condition_frequency = 3, then every third update, it will get a chance to select a new group of targets to act on dumbly for the next 3 updates.
The problem with this is that if they’re created simultaneously, every behavior where condition_frequency = 3 will be called on the same update, meaning the first two updates will be ultra-smooth, and the third slow as hell.
I think I have a way to spread things out evenly: assign an incrementing offset to each Behavior that will decide which update number it receives from those allocated to its update frequency.
Here’s a prototype, with a Counter that shares its “brains” with all other Counters in existence:
Read more...