newstalk

The TRUTH: Why the Kindle Will Fail

eykd — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:23:53 +0000

With all the brouhaha over the new Kindle 2, many are speculating on the future of Amazon’s eBook reader. Yet few people know the secret history of the Kindle. This history must be revaled before people understand the TRUE reasons why the Kindle will fail.

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Free Sky: A New Hope

eykd — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:33:53 +0000

I’ve been working on a reboot of Free Sky, codenamed “Shiny”, and things are coming along nicely. I’ve learned a lot about program structure in the last two years, and I’m finally beginning to understand the MVC (Model-View-Controller) way of making an app with a graphical interface. A lot of problems that seemed unapproachable two years ago now open themselves to solutions. Instead of writing reams of boilerplate code, my new controllers and views are slim and easy to understand. And I am finally beginning to understand and apply the most important design principle of all: You Ain’t Gonna Need It (a.k.a. YAGNI).

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Announcing Dyce.

eykd — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:40:37 +0000

I recently mentioned that I had a nifty little dice library and parser sitting around, waiting to get cleaned up and released as open source. Well, thanks to the common cold, I spent a good portion of today sitting around the house.

When I wasn’t sleeping, I was learning how to package a python library for release on PyPI, the Python Package Index, and setting up a Google Code project. Without further ado, behold: Dyce.

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Using tags for metadata and lookup.

eykd — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:00:26 +0000

This is a part of "Free Sky: Objects in Space".

Series contents:

Free Sky: Objects in Space
Enabling data-driven object construction.
Building for persistence at a fundamental level.
Using tags for metadata and lookup.

With my object system prototype, I wanted to explore the possibilities of tagging. An article in AI Game Programming Wisdom 2 (”A Flexible Tagging System for AI Resource Selection”, by Paul Tozor) spurred my imagination: the article poses the scenario of a first-person sneaker. The player sneaks up on two guards and overhears them complaining about the cold. The straightforward way to program this scenario is to assign each guard instance a list of sound files to play through, either randomly or in sequence. However, any time you want to add another sound file to the possibilities, you have to edit that guard’s list, and the lists of any other guards which need that sound file. Mr. Tozor proposes another way.

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Building for persistence at a fundamental level.

eykd — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:01:18 +0000

This is a part of "Free Sky: Objects in Space".

Series contents:

Free Sky: Objects in Space
Enabling data-driven object construction.
Building for persistence at a fundamental level.
Using tags for metadata and lookup.

One of the first problems I tackled in my prototype was persistence, because I foresaw the difficulties of object serialisation, and I feared them. Because I’ve chosen Python as my language of first resort, serialisation isn’t as big of an issue as it would be, say, in C++: it’s built in to the language as the pickle module. The mechanics of serializing individual objects isn’t the problem, but capturing the state of a large, complicated system with lots of little objects running around very well could be. I needed a strategy.

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Read the rest of Building for persistence at a fundamental level. (752 words)

Enabling data-driven object construction.

eykd — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:00:41 +0000

This is a part of "Free Sky: Objects in Space".

Series contents:

Free Sky: Objects in Space
Enabling data-driven object construction.
Building for persistence at a fundamental level.
Using tags for metadata and lookup.

In my research, I’ve spent a lot of time reading what the developers of rogue-likes have to say. One of the more famous rogue-likes, Angband, uses text files to define just about everything in the game. This sounds a lot like the Pragmatic Programmer dictum: “put abstractions in code, details in metadata.”

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Read the rest of Enabling data-driven object construction. (474 words)

Free Sky: Objects in Space

eykd — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:01:03 +0000

This is a part of "Free Sky: Objects in Space".

Series contents:

Free Sky: Objects in Space
Enabling data-driven object construction.
Building for persistence at a fundamental level.
Using tags for metadata and lookup.

For a comprehensive RPG like Free Sky, we’re going to need a good object system. This system should be no more complicated than necessary, allowing for easy design of game objects and quick overhauls when the game design changes. This mini-series will be a quick sketch of my thoughts toward this end.

Some principles, before I get started:

Enable data-driven object construction
Build persistence in at a fundamental level
Favor flat tagging over hierarchical categorization for metadata
Favor composition over inheritance
Favor interfaces and duck-typing over static typing
Test everything.

I spent a good year prototyping an object system that matched all these requirements. Because I spent a good amount of that time learning as I went, that system became large, unwieldly and brittle to any further changes. I am now attempting to rewrite the system using what I’ve learned.

In this mini-series, I’ll take each of the above principles and explain how it applies to my new design. I’ll also highlight some of the useful Python packages that I’ve discovered, and techniques that I’ve learned, that will make this system possible.

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Next in series

Another abrupt hiatus.

eykd — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:08:45 +0000

I haven’t posted since the election. I’m afraid that an imperfect storm of events have kept me away. For one, I burned myself out on the internet in the ramp-up to the election. For another, I decided that November would be National Change Your ISP Month (NaChYoIspMo). I’m now quite happy with WebFaction, and just about everything is working again. So, without further ado, I present to you:

Newstalk.

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Putting aside faction

eykd — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:55:59 +0000

Once again, John C. Wright finds the perfect blend of religion, philosophy, history, and politics:

The Founding Fathers hated faction and the spirit of faction, and this republic cannot stand if we cannot pack away the language and passions of faction, once the election is over, in the same way we pack up the bunting and the bandwagon banners.

He reflects on “the duties enjoined upon a free man under a republican form of government in these times; and next on the duties of a philosopher; and finally on the duties of a Christian.” Read the whole thing.

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What was missing from today’s election?

eykd — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:30:09 +0000

There were a few things I noticed lacking in my polling place experience this morning:

men with guns
threats to withhold food from my family if I didn’t vote, or voted for the “incorrect” candidate.
jackboots
Republican goons
Democrat thugs
Green hooligans
electioneering, or for that matter, electioneering

What was present at my polling place:

civic spirit (including laughter and energetic enthusiasm from the election volunteers)
a toddler playing in the corner with his toys while his dad voted (he didn’t want to leave: “Daddy, it’s not fair!”)
“I voted” stickers (though you didn’t have to wear them)
rumors of free coffee at Starbucks if I presented my voting stub (True!)
ominously, a Department of Homeland Security truck in the parking lot

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