The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Chop

June 11, 2009
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I recall reading in a book (it was probably Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living) about a man who listed six things that he was afraid were going to happen, and that were absolutely killing him with worry. All six were terrible things, any one of which could ruin his life, and they were all affecting different parts of his life. Some were about his career, some were about his family, some were about his health. He wrote detailed descriptions of all six possible disasters on a piece of paper. Which he then promptly lost.

A year later, he was cleaning out his desk drawers when he came across that piece of paper. As he reread it, he noticed that not one of the six things had actually come to pass. He had spent all that worry for nothing.

Yesterday I went to see my cardiologist and my electrophysiologist. I discovered that since my last visit to them three months ago, I have had no tachycardia of any kind – not even mild ones. My pacemaker/defibrillator has had absolutely nothing to do.

Now, this isn’t a clean bill of health, but it’s probably as close to one as I’m going to get given my medical history. If I keep up my exercise and keep taking my medication, odds are very good that I’ll never have another tachycardia.

David is out of school now, which by itself is a relief (no more endless meetings about what we’re going to do about him, nor phone calls in the middle of the morning telling us to come get him). His behavior at home has improved, and we’re actually having a behavioral specialist come in and work with him here in our home – and he’s responding amazingly well to her. She’s even been able to do the one thing his teachers never could: get him to calm down when he starts going off the rails.

Of course, the job situation is still completely dire, but now I can at least focus more on finding a job and working on Inaria iPhone.

(Having said that, if you hear about a programming job – any programming job – in the Austin area, send it to me. No, don’t take it for yourself or give it to your friend of seventeen years. Send it to me. Me. Me, me, ME! Me, dammit, me!)

PSP Promise

June 11, 2009
Games
1 Comment

During the 2004 run-up to the launch of the Playstation Portable, one of the promises made by Hirai & Co was that I would be able to carry around a playable copy of Final Fantasy VII at all times.

Now, five years later, that promise is finally kept.

So maybe now I’ll get one.

(Yes, I know, I could’ve already done it with homebrew, yadda yadda yadda.)

Game Coding Complete, Third Edition

June 2, 2009
Cool PeopleGame Programming
2 Comments

After I mentioned Mike McShaffry’s Game Coding Complete in an earlier post, a lot of people were complaining that the only copies they could get were used ones for $100 or more.

Well, despair no longer! Not only is the book available again, it’s in a spiffy new edition. This time, Mr. Mike has collaborated with other programmer/writers on various subjects. It’s almost like an edition of Game Programming Gems, but it covers game engine creation from the ground up.

And Amazon currently has it for less than $40.

If only I weren’t completely broke…

Updates on Various Thingies

June 1, 2009
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It’s odd, but talking about my problems has actually made them easier to deal with. I knew this at the time, which is why I did it 🙂

David’s about to be out of school. While he’ll be in my hair, he won’t be involuntarily hurting his teachers any more.

The job situation…well, still dire. I’m hoping that my iPhone project (which you can read about on my other blog) will bring in something…maybe pay the rent for a month or two?

The weight situation…well, I’m just going to keep walking five times a week and watching what I eat and what happens, happens. Maybe the next time I see my doctor he’ll have some suggestions. I actually feel pretty healthy; I’m just afraid that if I don’t get some more weight off I’ll end up with more heart problems.

So, things will get better. I’m sure of it.

Dumpage

May 25, 2009
FriendsPTFSDSelf-ImprovementUncategorized
1 Comment

Well…I haven’t been posting here much.

Why? Has nothing happened to me?

Oh, no. Quite the opposite.

But none of it has been good.

I don’t like posting about bad things…but the thing is, I created this blog so I could post about anything…and then I haven’t been using my newfound superpower.

Before you ask, no, I haven’t had any more heart problems.

But I now have some anxiety problems. I’m currently on some mild medication to help, but the thing that would really help is if some of the sources of stress in my life would resolve.

Unfortunately, none of them want to.

The job situation is dire. I’ve had exactly one in-person interview, and even though they really liked me, I didn’t have the necessary skills so they hired someone else. I’ve had several phone interviews – some went well and some went poorly, but none of them have resulted in employment. It’s as if the game development scene in Austin has dried up and blown away. I’ve had dozens of recruitment calls for companies all over the country, but I currently don’t feel like I can move because Jamie’s mother is currently in a nursing home…and David’s doctor is here (he’s supposed to be one of the best in the world).

My son, David, has been acting out increasingly at school. He’s mildly autistic, and something at school is just setting him off. He’s exhibiting behavior there that we never see at home – screaming at the top of his lungs, turning over furniture, thrashing wildly on the floor – and at this point I’m putting him on the bus, waiting an hour, and then getting a phone call from the school for me to come get him because his behavior is already out of control.

I consoled myself with the fact that within a few weeks the school year would be over and while he’d be in my hair, I wouldn’t have to worry about him accidentally kicking his teachers in the face.

And then last Thursday, Child Protective Services knocked on our door.

Now, the things that I hate about CPS are:

a) We cannot ask them who called them,
b) We cannot know exactly what they are looking for, and
c) They have the power to arbitrarily take our children away from us.

This seems a bit unconstitutional to me.

Needless to say, my stress level went off the chart. Now, it seemed like the case worker who knocked on our door was a good guy, because he agreed to an appointment the next day when it turned out my oldest daughter was in school. Thus we spent the next twenty-four hours scrubbing every surface we could reasonably clean in that time.

And then he came, had the appointment, and he ruled that there was no reason for CPS to get involved in our case. Which, frankly, I knew was going to happen…but the uncertainty just killed me for that twenty-four hour period.

And when I’m stressed, I eat. Thus my weight briefly got back up to 330 last week. Thus, no PTFSD posts. I’m currently dieting like crazy to get back to 320 (and perhaps below, if I can keep it up.)

Our financial situation isn’t looking good. Despite help from our wonderful family and friends, we have trouble making the rent and the COBRA payment (necessary for David and I to retain our health insurance) every month. As the month comes to a close and I still don’t know how I’m going to make the payments, again, my stress level spikes. At the end of April it got so bad I couldn’t sleep.

And, of course, the end of May is coming up. But I think I’ll handle it better than April because at this point I’ve been worn down so much that I almost don’t care any more. I’m on autopilot – check for new jobs in the morning, send out resumes, pick David up from school, help him do his schoolwork (he won’t do it at school but he does it fine at home), walk an hour, work on Inaria iPhone, try to eat under my calorie limit, go to bed, wake up, do it all again. All very healthy, positive behaviors that are not helping me one damn bit…but what else can I do?

Now I feel the need to apologize for the above. I’m not going to use this blog to complain about my life (at least not very often) but sometimes you just have to express this stuff to somebody.

Inaria iPhone, Update 3

May 20, 2009
Inaria
4 Comments

All subsystems are now working – indeed it is possible to play the game all the way from beginning to end. You can even save and load!

But as a lot of people suspected, the vertical layout just looked and felt bad. So I’m trying to get a horizontal layout going. Here’s a current screenshot:

I wish I could finish this project faster, but lots and lots of extraneous stuff has conspired to keep me away from it. I am hoping to have the landscape version complete by the end of this week, then spend next week adding the new content and making the demo…and then hopefully I’ll be done.

Inaria iPhone, Update 2

May 12, 2009
Inaria
5 Comments

And now we’re on the device – or at least the simulator.

The game loop is now running on the iPhone Simulator on the Mac. All drawing is now being done by OpenGL instead of SDL (which has been completely purged from the project). I haven’t implemented the new input controls so you can’t actually play the game yet, but there it is. I expect quick progress from here.

Inaria iPhone, Update 1

May 8, 2009
Inaria
5 Comments

Getting there.

Frankly, this code base is just awful to work with. Drawing in the input function, magic numbers everywhere – who wrote this crap?!

Oh, right.

On the upside, I have now made sure that all tiles in the game are either public domain or ones I’ve created myself, so I’m not worried about infringing anyone else’s copyright.

I think the way I’m going to do the interface is that you’ll play it GameBoy style, with a virtual D-pad under your left thumb (and I’ve recently discovered that virtual D-pads actually work really well on the iPhone) and the four icons for Fight, Look, Pick Up, and Talk under your right thumb, with your stats in the middle. Above that will be the area for the game strings (I’ll switch to a smaller font so I can get more text in there) and above that, of course, will be the map view. Since I don’t actually have an iPhone, can anyone out there who does tell me if this sounds viable?

The new Battle.Net

May 7, 2009
GamesThe Game Biz
6 Comments

Lured by the promise of potential Starcraft II beta keys, I went ahead and created a new Battle.Net account.

And I discovered something interesting that I hadn’t seen people mention much. You can add Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft III to your account just by typing in your (valid) CD key for each product.

At which point Blizzard will store the key and allow you to download and install the games onto any computer.

Which means that, for the first time since its release ten years ago, you can finally play Starcraft without needing a disc in the drive. Same thing for Diablo II. (To Blizzard’s credit, they did remove the CD check from Warcraft III a few updates back.) Indeed, you don’t need the discs OR the cd keys ever again, as long as you’ve got an internet connection.

This is progress of the highest order. The only thing lacking is the ability to buy the games online (Blizzard will still ship you a physical box if you order a game from them). Once that happens, Battle.Net will effectively be Blizzard’s version of Steam or Impulse.

Of course, you can’t add Diablo I or Warcraft I or II…which is kind of disappointing. Maybe that’ll get fixed later. Maybe Blizzard could offer those games as freebies to people who have purchased enough Blizzard products (which, goshwow, I think I have.)

Maccyland

May 4, 2009
Inaria
5 Comments

Jules Winnfield: So tell me again about the disc images.

Vincent Vega: What do you want to know?

JW: They’re legal there, right?

VV: Hell, yeah, they’re legal. When you download an application you’ll usually get it as a disc image. And I’m talking about perfectly legit applications, not the Bittorrent stuff. You can write these images to a disc to make an installer, or you can just mount the thing straight on the Mac as a new volume and install it from there.

JW: They don’t consider disc mounting software a tool of piracy?

VV: Naw, man, it’s built into the operating system.

JW: Oh, I’m goin’! I’m definitely going.

VV: I know baby! You’d dig it the most. But you know what the funniest thing about Maccyland is?

JW: What?

VV: It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it’s just – it’s just there it’s a little different.

JW: Example?

VV: All right. When you launch a program – sorry, an “application” – from the dock, you don’t get another icon telling you that program is running. The icon on the dock just gets a white dot next to it. And if a program on the dock needs your attention, it doesn’t pop up and grab the focus. It just bounces the icon and waits for you to click on it. Also, windows in Maccyland are double-buffered, so you’ll never see the awful tearing that you see so often over here.

JW: That sounds cool. Anything you didn’t like?

VV: The one menu bar thing screwed me up for a long time. Since the menu bar is not connected to the app it represents, you can’t give an app the focus by clicking the menu bar. You have to click the app’s window or its icon on the dock. Plus, Ctrl-V doesn’t paste.

JW: What?

VV: I’m serious. Ctrl-C doesn’t copy and Ctrl-V doesn’t paste. Instead it pages down in your text file. That’s doubly bad because it looks like it did something when all it did was lose you your paste location. Plus the Home and End keys jump you to the beginning and end of the current document, instead of the current line.

JW: Aw, man. I usually copy a URL in my browser’s location bar by hitting Home, holding down Shift, and then hitting End to select the whole URL. How’m I supposed to do it now?

VV: Triple-click.

JW: What?

VV: You triple-click the URL. That’ll select the whole thing.

JW: Seriously?

VV: Yeah, man, that shit even works over here – at least in Firefox.

JW: Triple-click. Man, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a triple click. Does it work in Opera too?

VV: I dunno, man, I didn’t go into Linuxville.