I had a simple test script that I was manually running every few commits and before pushing any changes out to the public repo. It worked, but being a Linux Systems Engineer though, this wasn’t going to stay that way long term. A lot of what I do in my day job is systems automation. Deploy servers, mange changes to large clusters, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery at the system level… So while my simple little python project was perfectly fine with being a manual build and deploy process, I couldn’t stand it.

So, I searched out a pythonic way to automate these tasks.

I quickly found ‘Tox‘, it’s a tool for automating the creation of virtual environments (running a specific python versions) then executing the builds, installs and acceptance tests. I can’t stress enough how much I like this tool.

[tox]
envlist = py26,py27,py31,py32

[testenv]
deps=nose
commands=nosetests weatheralerts

Take the above five lines of configuration, this is the extent of my tox config file. When tox runs using this config file, it builds 4 virtual environments, one each in python2.6, 2.7, 3.1 and 3.2. It then installs the package and in each along with the package ‘nose’ which is what I wrote my tests in. Once those are installed, it runs the test, in each environment.

This still is a huge step, but I still have to manually kick it off and if I forget to before pushing code out, it’s untested. So I needed something to automate the builds/testing based on commits, a continuous integration (CI) server of some sort.

After spending some time with Google, I had a long, long list of pythonic options to accomplish this. Unfortunately, they all sucked. I tested a few out but none did what I wanted in a manner that left me with as much hair as I had before starting. I’m sure projects like Buildbot and such will do what I want, but I wasn’t happy with any python option I’ve seen thus far.

So, I left things as they were for a few days. In my previously mentioned day job, a few of the servers I deal with in my relm (the relm of all things Linux) are build servers running. These are used for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.   These build servers use the project formally known as hudson, a.k.a. Jenkins. Jenkins is not written in Python, in fact it’s written in java almost as far away from pythonic as one can get. But as I work on this cluster on occasion I’ve found one thing about Jenkins that I really like… It seems to have been written by an intelligent form of life. It just works. So after a few days of putting it off still looking for a 100% python option, I spun up a new VM on my rack at home and installed Jenkins. That took a total of 10 minutes (including VM spinup), I took a look through the Jenkins plugin list and installed the git, github and python plugins as well as a few others.

I wanted to add a build job to watch my ‘dev’ branch on github and build/test any commits, emailing me if anything failed. It took a minute or two to plug in the details of the repo, branch and build steps and less than five minutes to work out a bug or two in my build steps. These were not having tox installed on the VM and simple stuff like that. No more than 10 minutes after starting to configure, I had the job working as desired. 20 minutes. In 20 minutes I installed the Jenkins server and had it watching my git repo. After any commit it pulls down the changes builds it, creates 4 virtual environments installs my python package in them and runs the tests, if there are any problems, I have an email waiting for me in my inbox. I’m adding a job now to watch the master branch for new release tags, that’ll build and upload new releases up to PyPi, taking the other manual task off the table. Some might say this is a bit of overkill for a small python module that few people will ever want to use, but there is a lot to be said for an automated and repeatable process.

I’m sad that I couldn’t find a python solution and I’ll continue testing options as they come along but you can’t go wrong with Jenkins.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Python Continuous Integration and Deployment (with Jenkins)

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Urban Abstract

In the wide variety of things I photograph, waterfalls rank pretty high on my favorites list. I also love winter and shooting black and white winter landscapes so it doesn’t get much better than a wintry waterfall scene. We headed up to one of my favorite (and sadly one of few) waterfalls in the area, Jump Creek Falls. This place is usually too busy for my tastes as it is a popular swimming hole where folks jump off the cliff all the time, thus the name. To many people, to much trash (by out west standards, saw one beer can) to many native paintings on the rocks, recent natives…. i.e. graffiti. But add six inches of snow and it’s a great place to go.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Winter Waterfall

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Beach Night Glow

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Voted

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Rain Forest Mushrooms

Sunset from Ruby Beach

We spent a few days last week shooting in Washington’s Temperate Rainforests and as you can see, spent time on the beach. We had been planning this trip for a couple months, hadn’t been to the Washington coast in many years and I wanted to get out of the mountains and spend some time in a place that knows what rain is. Since we spent time in my old home, the Smoky Mountains, earlier this year – we opted for the west coast.

We only had a few days and couldn’t come close to spending time everywhere on my shoot list – rather it was a quick whirlwind trip to reacquaint myself with the area and ultimately so we can make notes and plan an extended trip next spring. It really was a whirlwind tour though – we visited Neah Bay, Cape Flattery (most NW point in the 48 states), Ruby and Rialto Beaches (my two favs), Hoh and Quinault Rainforest and stayed on the beach at Kalaloch Lodge. We almost spent a night at the Quinault Lodge in the rainforest, but I’m glad we didn’t, they were hosting a photography workshop – that would have been annoying. The trip was 99% work and I was so amazingly tired after getting back – but it was nice to be in the land of humidity and more importantly, fresh  clam chowder. We’ve got our notes and an extended trip to Washington Coast will absolutely be on the calendar next year.

I will be posting a few photos from the trip here on my photoblog, and in the near future there will be section from this trip on my print gallery.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Ruby Sunset

I spent last weekend in a sound room/studio that I designed and put together years ago. I used to do sound work all the time, but not so much anymore — Still love it and get asked for help or answer questions on occasion, but I haven’t spent more than a few minutes behind a mixer in several years. Last Friday and Saturday I did and quickly remembered how much fun it is. During a lunch break though, I had a few minutes to take this shot, one I’ve had on my list for almost a year. This shot is of a Mackie sound mixer, one of my favorite boards. I’m not sure when I fell in love with Mackie products, but at some point I did and since then it’s the only brand I’ll happily recommend. Sure, there are other good brands, but there is just something about these boards I really, really like. I recommend them, cause if I ever end up at your venue or studio to help you, I want to run a Mackie. The brand doesn’t matter so much for this shot, in fact, their logo is in about the worst place (photographically speaking) you could put it.

For Photogs out there
I only had my camera backpack with me which just has a few essentials (7D, XSI, 35mm Body, 70-200mm/f4, 50m/f1.8, 10-24mm, 17-55mm, 430exII) — my lighting kit was a few miles across town and my tripod was out in my truck – I only had five minutes. I took a couple test shots at 50mm/f2.8 to get the angle and at a way to high iso I got a warm area in the shot from the goose-neck lamp. I pulled out the one flash I did have, the 430exII, and held it camera left. This blew away what little ambient & warmth I had so I had chose to gel the flash. Actually I needed warmth on the back of the board where the goose-neck lamp is, while maintaining natural color on the foreground faders. With one flash and zero ambient, I had little options. So I pulled out the gels, turned the flash head vertical and put a red gel on top to cover the background. Wasn’t quite the color mix I was going for so I added a CTB gel on the bottom, with a bit of overlap. With this I was able to get the deep color I was looking for and after a couple shots got the flash in the right spot (everything was handheld btw). I had about three minutes in this from start to finish before the folks started coming back for the afternoon session.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Mackie Mixer

HALO Reach - the latest (and last) HALO title from Bungie is a prequel to all other HALO titles

Some of you may have noticed that Bungie just released a new HALO title —  HALO Reach.   (video and pics at the bottom)

Reach is a prequel to all the other titles, if you know anything about HALO and the story arc, then you know, we lose this one. Very ambitious of bungee to give us a game in which we lose. So did they do the story arc justice? Blah. …Thankfully the game is great.

The character development and story within a story was pretty good.Where Bungie failed, I think, is in pulling these subplots together and plugging them into the over all story of HALO. You’ll recognize characters and ships from future titles, but they rewrite a few pieces of HALO history — not cool. In some ways it seems like they had the character stories, gameplay and everything else done and realized they needed something to make it feel like it wasn’t a total loss. I expected to feel heartbroken at the loss of human life, they totally missed the ball on this. Sure, we saw a few civilians die throughout the levels – but they totally missed the whole “hey, we’re the covenant, we’re here to kill everyone on your planet and soon, the rest of your planets.” It should have been more emotionally involving. With 1 through 3, the whole game you feel like you’re fighting for something. You have great moments of victory and defeat. At the end of the game you let out a big sigh and sit back a bit amazed at what you’ve just experienced, the story, the characters and oh yeah, the game play — you don’t want to move, you can’t believe it’s over.

Reach missed it. The game was great, the story could have been.

–SPOILER ALERT (slight)–

So, they glassed our planet, a lot of people died. In the end, you die. All of this was to save Cortana. There is plenty of emotion to tie into there. Late in the game, you start finding dead bodies laying around. In various cut scenes you see ships blow up but the connection is never made that there are people in those cities – sure you rescue some, but it doesn’t convey the thousands that you aren’t able to save. Every good sci-fi where aliens blow up a city has a shot of the ship pulling overhead and people running. Overdone? sure. But it would have been a start to tie that in with the final level cut scene where you die. And what about Cortana? She never says a word. seriously? We rescue her and she doesn’t say a word in the entire game? Our entire victory is getting her onto the Pillar of Autumn and it off planet. The final image should have been Cortana looking at Reach being destroyed as the ship makes it’s escape. Bungie, I love you, you failed us on this one.

If you look past the lack of story cohesion and involvement. This game is awesome. 99% because it’s HALO and the other 1% because they have really refind the gameplay.

A little perspective

You have to look at all the other titles to put this one in perspective.

HALO: Combat Evolved (halo 1) was revolutionary – It changed console gaming. The Story, the gameplay and most noticably, the beauty of the game… textures, scenery, architecture everything was beautiful.  Truly an epic game.  ”Combat Evolved” was really “Gaming Evolved”.

HALO 2 - Introduced one of the first, good, online multi-player games. AI improvements were again revolutionary but some of the gameplay lacked polish.

HALO 3 – Fixed the issues with H2 online multiplayer, thus launching a solid online platform that wouldn’t be touched in the next HALO release ODST. The campaign was awesome, but seemed a bit short. The gameplay was good, but had lost some balance (guns, enemy) and in too many places was a “run with trigger held” game.

HALO 3: ODST: Sucked.

So that brings us to the current/first/last (depending on how you look at it) of the HALO titles.

Environment

This aspect is done well. From the first cut scene and definitely after the first couple of trigger pulls, you WILL notice how beautiful this game is. Much like the first few minutes (and really every new level) of H1, you notice textures, scenery, and detail that is in this game. H2 and H3 were also beautiful and 3 even did HD justice, but Reach is a step above them all.

Sound

I’m a big fan of Martin O’Donnell, the sound in all of the HALO games has been amazing. Only once did I notice that usual  ”epic” sound classic to HALO, you know the one where you turn a corner and the music changes, picks up and you know it’s about to get bloody. I’m glad I didn’t notice the sound all the time, like in the other games. But I think a more moving and powerful sound may have helped in some places with the problems noted in the previous paragraph. That being said, when you do pay attention to the sound, again, his work is amazing.

Didn’t notice sound effects either. In H2 I believe it was, maybe 3, I noticed how accurate and detailed the sound effects were like when the empty shotgun shell hit the ground after it was fired, but I noticed them. In Reach, I don’t even recall their being sound effects. I think that’s a good thing.

Blood, Guts, Language.

We all know how many crazy colors covenant blood comes in – in the previous games there was blood everywhere. So much purple alien guts splattered on the walls that it was almost laughable.  I’m sure it was there in Reach, but I didn’t notice it like before, it’s very toned down. That’s not to say you can’t separate a grunt’s head from the rest of it’s body… it just doesn’t make as much mess.

Flood

If you’ve read the books or know anything about The Fall of Reach then you know the Flood doesn’t show up (and this part they didn’t rewrite). Two of the major characters in every HALO game aren’t in Reach. 1) Master Chief 2) The Flood.  I miss the Chief. I don’t miss, not even for a second, the flood. I think the flood in H1 and H2 were the week point of those games and only half done. H3 had to have them, and they were done well, but I still hate playing flood levels.

Levels and Maps

I’ve already touched on the beauty of the environment, but taking a look at the actual levels, overall, I’m really impressed. There are a few (in campaign and multi-player) that are remakes of h2 and h3 multi-player levels. At a couple points in the game you’ll get that deja vu feeling and know exactly where you’re at. It’s noticeable, but not annoying. It might be a bit more annoying in the multi-player, though I haven’t played those levels in MP yet.

Another thing we didn’t have in this game was repeated maps. Nothing I hate more than getting lost in the same maze of hallways, multiple times. I thought this was a weekpoint of the previous games, really without the arrows the forerunner conveniently left we would still be playing some of those levels. (Though you still had to remember if you were on the level where you needed to go with, or in reverse off, the arrows) On Reach I don’t think any map was repeated, nor was much of the architecture. The architecture was fresh and only in a few places had that “forerunner look” to it. Which, by the way, I kinda missed.

Previously you were either indoors and in close combat or outdoors in a sandbox, hundreds of enemy on a big field. There was very little in between. When playing coop you were always right on top of each other or in danger of  ”checkpointing” each other. Both of these are much improved, the layouts are varied – some large combat fields, some close and most in between.  They are also laid out in such a way as to promote co-op play i.e. multiple paths and strategic setups – this is a perfect coop game

Space Combat

The space combat level rocks! ’nuff said.

Gameplay

I’m rather impressed with the gameplay. The AI, player movement, balance of the game all are polished. Not revolutionary but refined. There is a noticeable improvement in the AI if you die and respawn on a checkpoint, they probably wont do the same thing again.

A few changes with Player movement include the carried equipment. Thsi has been changed to include such things as Sprint, Armor lockdown (love this), drop shield and most awesomely – jetpack. The jackpack is awesome, but not used much during the campaign.

Game Balance is much improved. You’ll quickly notice that 1) brutes are weaker 2) elites are stronger 3) your armor sucks. Literally two minutes into combat I ran into the middle of four elites. Would have been bloody but survivable in earlier games. In this case, I got schooled. So tone down the charges at elites just a tad, but feel free to take on a few brutes, even chieftains at the same time.  Both seem more responsive to being pistol whipped. Jackals are also a touch softer but their shields tougher.

I mentioned earlier that this isn’t a “run with trigger pulled” game. Many previous HALO levels fell into one of two categories. Run and Gun levels were those that so long as you kept moving and kept the trigger pulled, you’d be ok. Look but don’t touch levels are those, you know them, that if you stay toward the side of a map and don’t initiate contact… you can usually run or drive through them with little engagement. Both of these are pretty much gone in Reach.

In Short…

The story is good because it’s HALO, it lacks a bit in overall emotion and engagement, but it doesn’t take away from the game. You’ll find that better maps, better movement and gameplay balance come together to make it the best HALO game yet. It’s not revolutionary like HALO: Combat Evolved..  it’s Combat Refined.

If you liked any of the previous HALO games, you will like HALO Reach

Quick gameplay vid, showing the jetpack in firefight mode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2K4x9molls

A few screenshots I took from Campaign and Firefight.

---Show Slideshow---

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Halo: Reach — Combat Refined?

Over the next couple months I need to assemble quite a cast for a photo project in Boise, about Boise. The project focuses on artists, it makes an attempt to showcase them and their work in an interesting perspective. I won’t go into all the details until I have a few of the shots completed and have a better vision of where this road leads, but I’m sure it’s going to be great. We’ll starting shooting the second week of October with people I’ve already contacted and scheduled- I’m starting with the easier locations and saving really tough ones for late in the project, once me and the project has some momentum. If you’re at least mildly interested in being a part of this project, send me an email, I’ll give you more of the details about the theme and the locations.

Here is list of a few of the folks I’m still looking to work with for this project.

• Musicians
  I already have a several signed up, but could use a few more, so regardless of the instrument(s) you play – send me a note.  Especially looking for violinist, bassist and a small band. Near the end of the project I’ll be looking for a pianist but that will be the culminating piece of the project — And, quite a challenge – not sure I can pull off the location I want – need to work the phones and cash in a few favors
• Painter
  Have a couple on the maybe list – wouldn’t mind talking with one or two more.
• Potter/sculptor
  One of the more difficult shots.
• Dancer
  Really looking for a ballet or otherwise classically trained dancer. But if you’re a modern/contemporary dancer, feel free to contact me.
• B-Boy
  Need a master of handstands
• Shakespearean Actor
  This will be one of the later shots in the project.
• Mime(s)
  Should have this one covered already.
• Martial Arts
  May have this one covered already – but feel free to contact me
• Any creative/artistic person/small group
  I’m open to ideas. If you or your group is of the creative/artistic type and do something that isn’t in this list, let me know, I may already have enough interest in that area that I didn’t list it or I may have totally missed it. Speak up, we’ll see if you fit with the scope of the project.

As you can see, this isn’t a small project. I’ll post more details here in the future but in the mean time — if you fit in one of these categories, please contact me. If you know someone who does, pass this along.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Project: Thus Untitled…