Chris Charabaruk

Retiring Chris.Charabaruk.com as a blog

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:35:13 -0700

For a while now, this site has been mostly moribund, and certainly out of date. Thanks to Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and other services, I haven’t really made much use of chris.charabaruk.com. With my about.me profile, there’s not that much left for this site to do. Well, there is one thing it can do – host my projects.

So, effective immediately, chris.charabaruk.com is no longer my blog. Instead, coldacid.tumblr.com will serve as blog, and I will try to move my blog posts over. Then I’ll pull the site down to rework it into my personal projects store and portfolio. This will probably take a while to do, given all the demands on my time, but hopefully by the end of the year the new chris.charabaruk.com will be up and running.

Radio Alarm Clock 0.11 now available, and shinier too

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 05:35:00 -0700

Image via Wikipedia

That’s right, after over a year’s wait, a new version of Radio Alarm Clock. Technically, it’s actually version 0.11.0.1, as I found a serious flaw in 0.11 after tagging and building release packages, but before putting it online. These things happen, though. So anyway, the new version is here. And what does it add?

Rebuilt user interface for Vista and Windows 7 users. The new UI makes use of Aero glass transparency, as well as providing sleep radio and snooze functions from the taskbar. For those who’d rather have the original look, that’s still provided too, although cleaner, and more in-line with the new look.
Separate radios for sleep and alarm. No longer are you forced to use the same playlist for both!
Updated options dialog.

Of course, for all this to happen, the requirements have gone up. Radio Alarm Clock requires that the .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile be installed on the computer if you’re using Windows, or Mono 2.8 if you’re using anything else. And there are still no alternative radios available, just the Windows Media Player radio.

Radio Alarm Clock comes in an installable MSI package, or a zip file for those who’d rather not use MSIs (or can’t). I’ve also provided a torrent for the MSI package, simply because I can.

Radio Alarm Clock 0.11

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 05:00:17 -0700

Changes in 0.11.0.1:

FIX: Don't try to use Windows 7 features in Vista. (Caught after making 0.11, but before releasing it. D'oh.)

Changes in 0.11:

Separate radios for sleep and alarm mode.
Setting alarm time or switching radio modes now works by clicking on the time and mode labels.
New user interface for Vista and Windows 7 users. Includes taskbar buttons and glass background when Aero is enabled.
Settings no longer stored in registry. Installing future versions should no longer reset application settings.
.NET 4.0 Client Framework or Mono 2.8 now required to run.

Nationalize the last mile? Breaking the telco monopolies for superior consumer choices

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:26:40 -0800

Image via Wikipedia

During this whole debate about usage based billing, one idea that’s popped up is the idea of nationalizing the “last mile”, that bit of cable running between the home and the local phone service central office. Of course, the idea of nationalizing any service raises concerns about competition and limiting user choices. What I’d like to put forward is an idea that saves competition, while preventing the anti-competitive practices of current last mile operators/ILECs such as Bell Canada.

I’ll start off by explaining why some people believe that the last mile should be nationalized, or at least taken out of the hands of the companies that now operate it. All of the large telecommunications and internet service providers in Canada also own media companies and broadcasters. This creates a conflict of interest. Think about how Bell doesn’t just provide internet service (both as a wholesaler and direct to consumer) but also partially owns CTV (which competes with Netflix and other video services) and is a phone service (competing with Skype and other VOIP services). If you look at the other big providers here in Canada, it’s not hard to find similar conflicts of interest.

The big providers are very interested in controlling how people use the internet, so that online services can’t compete with their own subsidiaries. Separating the last mile from the established telecommunications companies makes it harder, or impossible, for them to control consumers this way.

So what do we do?

We start off by putting everything from the local exchange to the customer’s curb in the hands of provincial or municipal agencies created for the purpose of operating the last mile (which we’ll call LMOs, or last mile operators). This means it’s no longer Bell or Telus who owns the cables running from the demarcation point, but rather a crown or municipal corporation that has no role but to handle the physical management of the local phone system. The LMOs are able to contract out the actual operations of the last mile to companies that would actually manage this work, most likely to the current incumbents, but would be able to use a competitive bidding process to ensure that costs would be kept as low as possible.

Costs for LMOs would come from subscribers via their service providers, with no additional bills to the subscribers. As the costs of maintaining the last mile would no longer be handled by the ILECs, any increase in costs to consumers would be minimal, to cover the overhead of remitting what once would go towards last mile management to the new LMO.

So we’ve covered how the nationalized system would be organized, and how competition would be kept, nay, expanded, under this scheme. But what about actually getting service? To be honest, that wouldn’t be much different than how things already are. Under current rules, the ILECs are required to make their exchange central offices open to competing carriers and service providers (CLECs), for users who don’t want to use the incumbent’s services.

Under the nationalized last mile scheme I am proposing, you’d no longer have one ILEC and several CLECs. Instead, everyone would be a CLEC, with the same level of access to the exchange. They would have the same options as now: connect their own network in at the exchange (or possibly at serving area interfaces, those tall brown and green boxes we see sometimes along the sidewalks). Or they could piggyback on someone else’s network, as some internet resellers do with Bell and Rogers.

It’s technically possible to do this with cable TV services as well. No longer would you be living in a Rogers neighbourhood or a Shaw one, but you’d be able to choose which company would numb your brain with TV stations. For landline phone service, internet service, and cable service, the result is greater competition, as carriers would no longer be able to shut out competition the way they currently can (and do).

What’s the result?

By nationalizing the last mile, consumers see more competition. Artificial measures are no longer required to keep the market open, and incumbent providers no longer have motivation or means to manipulate how consumers use certain services in order to gain more value of others. The new LMOs only handle the physical connection between your home and the exchange central office, and are funded by the services you use, rather than by you directly (making them transparent).

To be honest, nationalization isn’t actually required. The idea is that the last mile is independently operated from the actual service providers. This might actually be more easily accomplished by breaking up Bell and the other ILECs, rather than just taking control of the last mile from them – however, this break-up has to be done properly, unlike how AT&T in the USA was divided up. Rather than slicing up the cake into smaller but still vertical segments, we need to separate the layers of this cake to ensure that consumers will get real competition, rather than just a broader oligopoly.

As with anything else, there would be need for some regulation on the new system. Mainly, LMOs can’t be owned by service providers, in whole or part (that would just bring us back to where we are now). They can’t discriminate against service providers. What they charge to the service providers for managing the last mile, and how much, would likely be regulated by Industry Canada or the CRTC. But this is simpler and more preferable than the complex and confusing regulatory scheme currently in place for local telecommunications operators.

In the end, Canadians will be safer from abuse of telecom monopolies, enjoy greater choices for their phone, internet and TV services, and no longer have to deal with certain service providers using misconceptions about internet use to bolster their already enormous profit margins. Whether by nationalization or by breaking up the ILECs more directly, separating the last mile from service providers is an option Ottawa should carefully examine.

I’ve not written in a while on here…

Chris Charabaruk — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:49:10 -0800

It’s been far too long since I blogged here (or even on my stream of derp Tumblr account). I figure I should give a bit of accounting on what I’m up to lately, barring any real content.

On the project front, it’s been pretty silent but I’ve been working on two different games (well, a game and a visual novel, depending on how you slice your toast). This isn’t exactly new news, but there’s not been much mentioned about them.

Anyway, Painter Story is pretty generic, especially as far as original English language ones go – boy goes to school, girl magically appears in his life, boy learns about the importance of love and relationships, blah blah blah. To be fair, though, the original intention of PS is to serve as a learner project for me, get me comfortable with writing interactive fiction. I’ve got ideas for more original VNs, but I’d rather hold off on them until I’ve cut my teeth with this one.

It’s been slow going on Painter Story, though, and that’s mainly my fault as story designer and main writer. Originally, not much work had been put into developing the theme or plot of the story, and the first attempt at a draft was pretty much universally reviled. It took the summer and most of the fall so far to get things to a state where I felt comfortable with writing. But here we are now, with a better, more detailed (and complete!) storyline, and I intend to get to work on actually writing out the scenes this week.

The other project is UFO Panic!, an XNA remake of my old Alien Abduction game from the first TOJam. So far it’s been more or less a simple port from SDL.NET, which the original was built on, to XNA. However, I have plans for this as a sellable title, and the idea of going 3D is one that I’ve not dismissed.

UFO Panic! is a shooter, pretty much – you fly around shooting “tractor waves” at aliens to beam them up, and energy bolts at defending tanks before they can blow you out of the sky. Power-ups were part of the plan but never realized in the original versions. If you want to check it out, I’d advise not downloading it from the TOJam site, as that version is horribly buggy. Instead, I’ve put up a somewhat improved version on MediaFire, which while still full of problems, at least works.

Pulling it all together, I’ve also started work on the new version of coldacid.net and its new brand – coldacid development group (CDG). CDG is me and a couple of people I know, and it exists to design and develop entertainment and new media properties (not necessarily games, but also social web services, etc.). When I get back to working on Taskerrific, it’ll be under the CDG brand, also.

This isn’t the only stuff I’m working on right now, but much of the rest is personal, not professional improvement, and probably irrelevant to talk about here. I might post something about it on Tumblr if/when the DDoS attacks end and I can actually access it reliably again!

I should set up a weekly task to remind me to blog something, anything. It’s really been too long.

How would a PSP phone affect mobile gaming?

Chris Charabaruk — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:17:21 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

The rumour mill has lately been talking about an Android-based PSP phone from Sony Ericsson. While the jury’s still out on whether this magical device is real or not, I’ve been thinking about what it means for phone-based games.

On one hand, it’s not like this’ll be the first time someone’s tried combining phones with handheld game consoles. Remember the Nokia N-Gage? No? Not surprising. It was kind of a flop. Despite attempts to bring phones and games together by Nokia, Apple, and most lately Microsoft, the vast majority of mobile games are for full-fledged mobile consoles like the PlayStation Portable or Nintendo DS.

On the other hand, we’re talking about a phone that is a PSP. That alone can give Sony the edge in phone games, especially if they open up the platform’s power to apps running on the phone’s Android 3.0 OS. Backwards compatibility with existing PSP titles will clinch it.

The images I’ve seen of prototypes for this proposed phone include physical controls as well, similar to what’s offered on the PSP Go. As someone who’s tried both physical and touchscreen buttons for games, this goes a long way in the PSP phone’s favour, over the offerings of Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 systems. From what I gather, the latter only requires three physical buttons, none of which can be coopted for application use, making them useless for games. And what’s the likeliness of developers restricting themselves to just the higher end phones with usable physical buttons? With margins where they are, not bloody likely.

If the rumours are true, Sony has everything to gain. Hell, I’d go as far to say they’d be stupid not to put this thing out, even with me being a Microsoft fanboy and all. The PSP phone would blast the iPhone game market back to the stone age (lol fart apps) and strangle Microsoft’s WinPhone gaming opportunities in the crib.

Next year’s mobile industry will certainly be a fun one to watch.

Good Enough versus Perfect

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:11:39 -0700

Image by AUSTIN_O via Flickr

The perfect is the enemy of the good. – Voltaire

Motivation to perform to perfection is a strong force in western society. The attitude that we have to be better than anyone else at something, to achieve perfection in our activities, has been a strong force throughout modern history, from the world's nations down to the individuals which form their bases. And it's seen every day in projects of all scopes and sizes.

But Voltaire left a message that should be listened to, by everyone on every project – one that is unfortunately ignored by many, to their detriment.

It's a somewhat heretical thought: What if we don't have to be perfect? What if we just do good enough to pass? What will that offer us instead of striving to be the best? Well, what it offers is the ability to work more efficiently and still do a proper job of it.

What is good enough?

It's actually pretty simple. Being good enough is about meeting the needs of the project, rather than the ideals. Some might think it means lacking quality, but it's really more about balancing quality against the work that actually needs to be accomplished.

For an example of something good enough, one need only recall the 1980s and early 90s, to VHS. In the late 70s and early 80s, it competed against the Betamax standard for home video. However, it won the competition in the end because it was good enough for the average consumer. It was cheap, had acceptable video and audio quality, and was readily available. In contrast, Sony's Betamax standard, while better quality than VHS, was more expensive and harder to get a hold of. The focus of having a perfect format paradoxically resulted in a product that couldn't cut it against VHS.

What's wrong with perfection?

First of all, perfectionism is procrastination. Say it out loud: perfectionism is procrastination. When you try to be perfect, you get little, if anything, actually accomplished. Planning for perfection leads to a project terminal state known as analysis paralysis – you get so bogged down in the details of what could happen, what could be needed, etc. that you never actually get started at all. And for a project that is in development, perfectionism can lead to endless wanking on a few particular pet tasks of the developers, as they keep trying to make those parts they're working on better and better. At first it may look like progress, but at some point, those constant attempts at improvement return no value at all.

On the other hand, aiming for Good Enough just gets the job done. In planning, you focus on what the requirements are, no more, no less, and how to meet them simply and efficiently. No worrying about edge cases or making things bulletproof or endlessly customizable – meet the core needs and be done with it. As for development, it should be simple enough to test against the plan to see if a task is met. Once it is, you move on to the next one, and stop worrying about the one you just finished. The work goes by faster, and you accomplish more.

Another issue with perfection is that not everyone agrees on what perfect means, in the context of the project. It's very easy to end up with a camel, when what you want is a horse, because everyone thinks that the perfect quadruped needs this or that or the other thing. It's a very subjective concept, as opposed to achieving good enough. Not to say that good enough isn't subjective itself, but it's a much easier target to hit and reach consensus on, and if you plan well, it can be objectively determined whether or not something is Good Enough based on project goals, client needs, and metrics collected during the planning and development stages of a project.

Determining what is good enough

There are three simple questions you can ask:

Is it simple? That is to say, is the design simple and can be picked up by the developers without much work? If the design and implementation is simple, it's easier to make any needed changes later, while still fulfilling the current requirements now.

Does it work acceptably well? If it's easy for the end user to figure out, and does the job without raising problems the user can't handle, it's good.

Does it cover all the bases? It should meet the project requirements, with a minimum of additional features tacked on. Wherever additional things are added, it should either be because of (legitimately) changing requirements, or because those features are required by the features which do meet project requirements.

Conclusion

There are some clear advantages to aiming for good enough rather than for perfection. You'll be more efficient while still providing a proper job well done. It's not necessary to provide all the bells and whistles so long as you meet the goals of your project, so don't try for it! Success comes from getting the job done right, not done perfect. And good enough is doing it right.

The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. – Karl von Clausewitz

Initial impressions on the Windows Live Essentials wave 4 beta

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:55:02 -0700

Windows Live Essentials wave 4 came out in beta last week, but I’ve just gotten it installed today. I’ve been toying around with it a bit, and I’d like to share some of my first impressions on the betas.

Windows Live Messenger

With the new Live Messenger, Microsoft’s introduced a social timeline to the client, which apparently can tie in to Facebook and MySpace. By default it’s tied into Live’s own social networking/profile system. I prefer the classic UI, which the new version retains (although it’ll give you the social view by default) but if I had more screen space, I’d probably make use of the new view. It’s actually pretty neat, and it’ll probably integrate more services as time goes on, making it more useful to people.

Windows Live Writer

With the new version of Windows Live Writer, we have ourselves a ribbon. That’s right, the much touted ribbon that was introduced in Office 2007 and refined in WordPad and Paint on Windows 7 shows up now in Live Essentials. As part of the UI change, the sidebar that once offered a list of things to insert into blog posts is no longer there. Instead, an Insert tab on the ribbon provides those same items, putting those provided by add-ons into a ribbon gallery.

Unfortunately, Zemanta (a blogging assistant that has been my favourite add-on for WLW) doesn’t work with the beta just yet, but hopefully that’ll change soon. However, fitting it in might be a bit of a hassle. Meanwhile, other add-ons that I’ve used in the past I haven’t installed on this system, so I can’t say whether they work or not. Here’s hoping that they do, however!

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Unfortunately, I haven’t much good to say about the new version of Live Photo Gallery. While the past versions were great for managing my pictures, the new version removed the tag trees from the left-hand navigation pane. And there appears to be no option to restore them.

It’s because of those tag trees that I bothered with WLPG in the first place. I have many, many images on this computer and others, and being able to organize them and navigate through them by tag made it easy and quick to find whatever picture I was looking for. The new ribbon makes it easy to find pictures based on who’s in them, but for general tags, it’s not so easy. Not only that, but managing the tags themselves has become much more of a hassle, now that the list of them is not easily accessible. The result is a lot of empty space in that navigation pane, and a worse user experience.

Sorry, Microsoft, but if the general and people tag trees aren’t restored in the RTW for wave 4, I’m dropping WLPG for something, anything, that actually provides me with real tag navigation. For me, this is a serious deal-breaker.

Windows Live Sync

Live Sync actually has a UI now, rather than just a login dialog and simple options dialog. Rather than simply provide a way of accessing all the files on your computer through a Live.com subdomain, it lets you synchronize particular folders with the cloud. However, all I’ve used Live Sync for is to access files on my desktop when I’m on the road – something that this version retains, so long as you enable it first.

However, accessing files is different now, through the Live Devices site. And if you’re not running the beta, your system doesn’t show up there. This can lead to a tricky configuration issue if you’re not running the beta on all your systems. You can still use the old Live Sync, but not concurrently with the wave 4 beta. It’s still there after you install the beta, but the beta Live Sync just won’t run at the same time as the older version. Pay attention to that fact if you’re using it for anything.

One thing to note as well about Live Devices – if you have a cell phone, you can have it show up on there, too. However, don’t expect to be able to do anything with it just yet, and certainly not if you’re running anything other than Windows Mobile 6.5 on it. Although even then, money’s out on whether it’ll only be useful for Windows Phone 7 anyway.

Bing Bar

I haven’t really played around with this, but if you’ve installed the beta and run Firefox, you’ve probably noticed your shiny new toolbar. That’s right, the replacement for the Windows Live Toolbar supports Firefox now. Given the fuss that Microsoft has gotten into in the past for adding plugins and extensions to Firefox, you’d think they’d avoid tossing it in without any mention. On the other hand, if you check that box to install it…

Personally, I preferred the old Live Toolbar, as it at least blended in better with the look of Internet Explorer. Whether you’re using IE or Firefox, the Bing Bar sticks out like a sore thumb, and while it may be just as useful as the Live Toolbar was, it feels a lot more annoying.

The Rest

There’s a Live Messenger social connector available now for Outlook Connector. If you’ve been using that to keep connected to LinkedIn, you’ll now find that Outlook will keep you connected to the social features in Live, too. Not played with that yet, but interested to see how it’ll turn out.

I don’t use Family Security, and never bother installing it. I don’t need it, so no opinion there.

Likewise, while I do install Live Movie Maker, I almost never use it other than to play around. I haven’t actually ever made anything with it. As for what wave 4 offers, I haven’t even launched it to see.

So that’s about it for my initial impressions. Very neat (but screen-wasting) social features in Live Messenger, nice new ribbon in Live Writer, a more useful Live Sync, a gaudy Bing Bar, and a disappointing Live Photo Gallery.

Moving the site to a new location

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:47:20 -0700

So, you might notice that coldacid.net is now chris.charabaruk.com. Do not be alarmed. I’m rearranging things to repurpose my coldacid handle, with a new coldacid.net site to come around in the near future – one that will not be just my personal stuff, but rather for doing contact programming, various projects, etc.

For now, the domain will lay fallow, passively redirecting people to chris.charabaruk.com, but in late July/early August, the new coldacid development site will appear, and I will start offering services through it. Meanwhile, I hope to get back on the blogging horse here, including posting stuff I was reticent to post when coldacid.net served as the professional and personal site for me.

By the way, anyone out there a decent vector artist and willing to turn some sketches into a proper, vectorized logo for free (or very, very cheap)? Let me know, thanks.

Taskerrific is gone; what next?

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 08 May 2010 05:55:51 -0700

Well, it’s not really gone, but I’ve shut down the Taskerrific beta and put the site on reserve, as I have neither the time to maintain it nor the money to have the service hosted properly. It sucks having to do that, but right now, I need to make money, not spend it. So Taskerrific is down and I am back on the job hunt.

I have some plans for reviving Taskerrific at a later point, but right now my focus outside of looking for employment is on my writing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently working on a visual novel, and in addition to that, I’ve got speeches to write for Toastmasters, and story ideas I want to convert into actual stories. I’m keeping up on my programming as well – perhaps not to the extent I was coding in my Taskerrific days, but still making sure that I’m up to date on what’s going on in the field. Considering my plans for Taskerrific’s revival, well…

I’m going to try writing on here more often. I’ve created a repeating task to remind me to actually blog something at least once a week, and while it probably won’t always be technology-related, hopefully it’ll be something of interest to someone. As usual, though, most content will be through Twitter, FriendFeed, and Reddit.

And again, if you’re looking for someone who can help you out, contact me. But please, only if you actually have an actual offer. I need actual work, not a “we might be interested” line. (Sorry if that sounds angry or rude, but the stress of this job search is really weighing on me.)