In the interest of coming back to writing on the side, I consolidated my static web page and blog into one site, schoonology.com. For the curious, this amounts to routing 3 second-level domains (one having two third-level domains) to this WordPress install. For your entertainment, feel free to click the following links. They should all route back to this article:

• Migrated URL: http://schoonology.com/a-proper-migration-conditionally-apply-a-301-redirect-with-wordpress/
• Old URL: http://blog.theschoon.com/a-proper-migration-conditionally-apply-a-301-redirect-with-wordpress/
• Really Old URL: http://theschoon.com/a-proper-migration-conditionally-apply-a-301-redirect-with-wordpress/
• Just In Case URL: http://michaelschoonmaker.com/a-proper-migration-conditionally-apply-a-301-redirect-with-wordpress/

The Solution: The 301 redirect

Head on over to the Wikipedia article for more information, but there’s an HTTP status code for my exact problem: 301.

Almost everyone knows what a 404 means. It’s the HTTP status code for “that document does not exist”. If I left the other 3 domains hanging, that’s exactly where those links would lead: nowhere. So the first step was to go into my host’s settings and tell it to point all four to the WordPress install. Poof! No more 404′s.

Now, though, you’re left with four URLs that all point to the same place. To both normal users and (gasp!) search engines, it looks like there are four different websites that have the same exact content. Enter the 301. What it means is “this document has moved.” So both your browser and Google understand that they’ve gone to an old address, and can be re-routed accordingly. Ta da!

The Juicy Bit: How it’s done

I was delighted to discover with a bit of legwork on Google that WordPress comes with a redirect method build in. Not that I couldn’t just modify the headers myself in PHP; the wordpress method produced cleaner code. What I had discovered was wp_redirect.

After a few iterations, I wound up with the following code, added to my functions.php file:

function conditional_redirect()
{
	if ($_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] != 'schoonology.com')
	{
		wp_redirect('http://schoonology.com' . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], 301);
	}
}
add_action('get_header', conditional_redirect);

First we define a function to do the redirect itself. Remember folks, composed methods and extracted methods are your friends, even when they’re not required for a function reference, as they are in this case. Inside, the conditional checks to see if we’re already where we want to be. If we are, then there’s no reason to redirect someone to it, is there? Otherwise, perform the redirect.

Be sure to specify the status code! WordPress defaults to 302, which means we’ve “temporarily” moved the document. This isn’t a temporary move, this is the document’s permanent new home. Finally, we call our method. Voila – All the links do what we want.

It’ll be quite something, really, if an MMO can find a way to effectively achieve this. Much stands in the way of it, not the least of which is fairness amongst the players, but I think it’ll be a great achievement in the genre. Something to look forward to.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Strawberry-Stuffed French Toast.

Becca (who would later become my fiancée), Cliff (a fellow musician and good friend), and myself are relaxing at the student-run café of my alma mater, Bucknell. I’m just getting interested in video games as a profession, and regardless of that – video games became conversation topics quite frequently. In this case, however, it was not a specific game for once. What came up was a question: “So, if games use first person and third person, what about second person?” It’s a glorious question, to which we composed a glorious answer.

Our logic was as follows: In first person literature, you’re telling the story with “I”, “me”,  “we”, and “us”. With a game in the first person perspective, you tell the story the same way – through the eyes of the person telling it. In third person literature, you’re telling the story with “he”, “she”, “it”, “they”, “them”, etc. In a game with a third person perspective, you’re now telling the story with a certain disconnect from the main character. You’re telling the story about them, not as them. Cue the red-headed stepchild of the trio, second person. If we were to write a second person novel, we would write out the whole book as a conversation, using “you” and “your”. How, then, do you represent this conversationalist in game form? Through the eyes of the other person.

We’d solved it. To us, that’s what a second person game must be. However, we still didn’t have a concrete feeling of what that would play like. I went into game designer mode, and penned out a scenario as premise: two robots, trashed in a heap, trying to escape. They reassemble one another, but get the cameras switched. Escape becomes more urgent, and so the two decide to deal with the situation as is rather than try and swap heads. So the game begins. I called it Scrapped! and built a prototype straight away:

A demo of Scrapped!'s camera

NOTE: While working on this, my curiosity bit and I search the internet for previous attempts at “second person” as a game perspective. All I found at the time is what I’d rather call “parrot cam”, which is an over-the-shoulder view. Thinking back, I searched again (trying to find the article I wrote last time, to no avail), and stumbled upon the idea that “second person” meant you, the player, were the main character. I’m not sure that plays to the conversational nature of the second person “you”, but I see where they’re coming from.

Finally, the demo you see above was complete. I built in networking, tank controls, and two working perspectives: one for each player, even though you drove the other tank. Grabbed some victims friends, tried it out…… it was dreadfully difficult to see where you were going, you really couldn’t position yourselves in the right way to be helpful to one another, and more often than not you just ran into each other.

In retrospect, it was hard to navigate because there’s no sense of depth in a black vacuum. Granted – what you see above was the copy I found lying around on my hard drive when I went looking. There’s a more complete version somewhere, I just couldn’t find it. Also, it was hard to see because of the height of the camera with respect to the ground plane, and the running into one another problem could be fixed with some fudging of the collision volumes. Either way, the point stands: this was an amazing thought experiment and awesome practice, but just did not pan out in the end. Love the story, though.

You see, I always thought of all the other disciplines in that light. That is, those who studied Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, and other Engineering degrees in college were the Engineers — I was just that guy who made video games.

Now that I’m out in the real world, I know very few of those ladies and gentlemen who are engineering in the way that Mike meant — treading new and unfamiliar ground, having your ideas and solutions tried and tested, and being required to support your solutions the “old fashioned way”, etc. We may not be doing anything life-or-death, but when society decides we need actual solutions to our problems, I think I’ve got a good idea where they’ll be found.

I wonder if this means I can retroactively refer to myself as an Engineer to all my old collegemates…

Frank Schoonmaker was a wine merchant, fellow Taster, and wine critic. Through the Schoonmaker Family Association, I’m trying to track down a more specific relation between myself and Frank, but for casual sake I refer to him as my “great-uncle”. He looked a lot like my great-grandfather did, and wouldn’t be the only vet in the family, and either way you look at it — he put a lot of wine in my blood.

For one, mentoring is an ideal method of learning for most people, as it eliminates a lot of the fumbling around that a newbie to a particular topic would do on their own, and yet (with a good mentor) maintains the proper environment with which an individual can learn “on their own” – by doing.

I don’t mean to dig up academic theory, but I do find it interesting. Fortunately, as I’m the newbie in a lot of cases, I’m surrounded by people who – as smart as they are – are willing to answer any questions I sling at them. Keep in mind that it does help to have well-constructed questions – and I certainly try to make each one count.

You never know when they’ll stop answering…

At first thought, I would say teach. To inspire them may make them want something, but when you take the time to teach someone, you make them capable of that something. The reason this discussion is even extant is that I’ve been singing more recently, but singing only swing songs. I remember back to when I was taught by a man named Jim Balagurchik. If you look at his site, a lot of those pictures are from our shared alma mater: Bucknell University.

Jim took the time to teach me how to use my voice to express myself in the fine world of jazz and swing. However, just as Jim’s the reason for the argument, he’s also the reason my first instinct is wrong. To teach is to make possible, true. But to inspire is to make probable that the student will act on what you taught. Through his performances, Jim inspired me as a lot of swing greats have inspired me — to keep on singing…