Morning Cereal

Presenting Twister MC

2011-02-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Made my first computer game with my daughter this weekend. It's not so much of game, but a digital announcer for playing Twister. A fun little project, but I think I was into it more than she was. We'll wait awhile before our next collaborative masterpiece. Until then you can check out TwistMC. There's not much to look at, but it was a fun weekend. See it in action on Youtube. Grab the

Wine easily handles Starcraft 2

2010-07-31T17:44:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the Wine developers. Wine 1.2 runs Starcraft 2 without any difficulties. The performance is a percentage slower. I'm sure performance would have actually been better than Windows, if the game came with an OpenGL renderer, like previous Blizzard games have. Starcraft 2 on Ubuntu. Thanks to Wine 1.2.

Now in stores

2010-07-18T21:43:00.001-07:00

Look at those shiney new boxes inside Best Buy. Only preorder, but the real deal is a week away.

Minifb 1.3

2010-06-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

Released updates to Minifb. Now includes better support for running under Google's App Hosting. Thanks to kscott, who contributed almost all of the changes. I think I worked out my problems with the pypi project listing as well. It's been awhile since I looked at the world of Python libraries for Facebook. I see that Facebook released their own package for dealing with their graph. It looks like

Master of Webs

2010-05-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

I've been wearing my webmaster hat these days, as we update the Cupcream site. There's so many cool new things you can put into a website these days. I got a chance to try Google's Web Font Directory, and the excellent jQuery plugin, CrossSlide. Now I just need to figure out why FeedParser is getting the blog titles wrong on my excellent host, WebFaction. Cupcream.com

Pycon productivity for Reimport and Minifb

2010-02-21T18:22:00.000-08:00

I've been working on my little side projects. Nothing like a little Pycon to motivate my efforts.Reimport has been updated to 1.2 with a handful of bugfixes.Minifb has a small update that should get it working on Google App Engine again.These are finally available on the Python Package Index, thanks to a little help.

New reimport version 1.1

2010-01-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

I've released a new version of my excellent reimport module for Python. A collection of fixes have rolled in since it's release last year. This module is proven and battle tested now.In my opinion this is one of the most underrated utilities for all of Python. You can be sure I'll be pimping it a bit next month at Pycon 2010.

Pyflakes released

2009-11-29T14:17:00.001-08:00

A new version of Pyflakes was released. This is one of my Python secret weapons, even though I am always trying to push it on others. At work we have a well laid plan coming together involving a "build" step for our Python libraries. You can bet Pyflakes will be a cog in the machine.

Lord of the Timelines

2009-11-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

Randall Munroe is the author of the geeky XKCD comic. He put together an awesome timeline, charting the characters in the Lord of the Rings throughout the entire movie trilogy. I can get lost wandering this sort of thing, and it must have been some project to map it out.

Bastion of Resolve

2009-11-01T20:40:00.000-08:00

The awesome shield, Bastion of Resolve, came to me today from the 25 man Faction Champions. This is a ginormous upgrade for me from the Barricade of Light. And blows away all I dared hope for in the Pulsing Spellshield.My first World of Warcraft post?

Minifb 1.2 release

2009-10-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

I updated my excellent Facebook module for Python. This "minifb" is the best way to create your own Facebook applications in Python. It's been fun to work on again as I shuffle my own iCream around.I also added Python3 support to the module this time. The dual 2 & 3 interface wasn't too tricky to write for such a small amount of code.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Boot Benchmark

2009-10-22T21:56:00.001-07:00

With my trusty laptop running Ubuntu 9.10, I granted my curiosity some light benchmarking of boot times. This is on my HP dv2610us with plenty of memory and a minimum specced hard drive.Obviously it takes awhile for this machine to get going. Fortunately suspend has been rock solid on this since the dawn of Ubuntu. Note that the stopwatch was paused any time there was user input required. I

Blizzard-Tube

2009-09-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

Cool Blizzard site is up on Youtube now, with all the cinematic hawtness. Best way to see all the tasty treats from Blizzard. (Although the tastiest of treats are waiting for a new title to ship.)

Pydev open sourced

2009-09-04T00:33:00.001-07:00

Pydev is the most amazing editor and debugger for Python code. Even though I don't mesh with the whole "Eclipse Universe", Pydev is just so good I can overlook. It looks like today the commercial "Pydev Extensions" has been merged with the already open source "Pydev".I occasionally wish for a Pydev editor (and debugger) embedded in some lighter weight shell (Scite?). I'll have to look at Aptana's

Sass instead of Css

2009-08-20T08:15:00.001-07:00

Looks like Sass rocks, instead of plain old CSS. Who can resist; cleaner syntax, variables, math, templates.// sass example!margin = 16pxtable.hl margin: !margin / 2 padding: !margin / 2 td.ln text-align: rightli font: family: serif weight: bold size: 1.2em

PyQt News

2009-08-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm seeing a few headlines regarding Qt today. Trolltech is updating the styling and navigation for Qt, and just released a preview snapshot. I always thought their documentation was strong, but improvements are welcome. In other news, there is a brand new LGPL Python binding for Qt named PySide. Very interesting. Looks like they have their own Boost code generator that is driven from the Qt

Pycon 2010 Proposal

2009-08-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

I've submitted my proposed presentation for Pycon 2010. This is something I wanted to do last year, but lazed[1] my way out of. No excuses this time![1] Laze. Verb. To delay on a good idea until its obviously too late to do anything about.

Nuke Learning Edition

2009-08-11T21:42:00.001-07:00

One of the tools we use at work is Nuke. This is a compositing program that we use to mix many different rendered images together. I just learned that Nuke has a "Learning Edition" available, which makes is free and easy to try. The learning edition has a few restrictions, the most noticeable will be colored artifacts in the images it creates. Still worthwhile to download and experiment with for,

Wikimedia pics of the year

2009-06-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

Great images on Wikimedia's 2008 picture of the year. Fun to tour through all 24 winners. Amazing that these are just a tip of the iceberg in the 4.5 million freely usable media files hosted by Wikimedia.

Python reimport

2009-06-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

I've released a new Python utility named reimport. It is a replacement for Python's reload statement that does a bit of work to actually reload an existing module into the runtime.There are more details on the project page how it all works, but the basic consensus is that it does work. I think this has been needed for a long time in the Python world. This won't solve everyone's problems, but I

What is Quake Live?

2009-02-24T21:52:00.001-08:00

Quake Live, for the fail. I have an idea. Let's take an ancient game engine with some fun multiplayer content and release it as a web game for competitive play. A strong sounding idea, but in reality, here is how id software completely failed at this idea.Windows only binary client. (So why is this tied to a website in the first place?)Online beta that can accommodate 0% of interested players. (

World of Goo is GOOD

2009-02-16T23:37:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I've received more than one recommendation to grab World of Goo from 2D Boy.They just released their Linux edition, along with a demo. I'm hooked, I'm loving it.I'm inspired with the pluggable and playableness of the packaged release. This commercial indie gaming on Linux done right.

Master electrician

2009-02-07T20:31:00.000-08:00

Once every few years I get to pull out my soldering iron and try to patch or mutate some wires.Today's project was to fix a loose connection on this monster fan that keeps my laptop from going magma while playing games on it. The fans do a great job keeping it cool, but lately the connector has worn loose and gives intermittent power, at best.It turns out I'm not so good at these surgical

New pyflakes

2009-02-05T15:52:00.000-08:00

My favorite static analyzer for Python, Pyflakes got a new 0.3 release today. I'll be happy to check this out closer. Without paying attention I had thought this project was dead.Although lately I've been more pleased with the live in-editor code checking done by the Pydev extension.

Starcraft2 Legos

2009-02-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

You've got to love people who create fantastic Lego artwork. And Starcraft 2 theme gets you bonus points. Starcraft II Lego Sets

LucasArt posters

2009-02-04T10:24:00.000-08:00

LucasArts PostersAwesome cleanups from the original LucasArt lineups. I need to find me a nice color printer and decorate my desk!

Future Parenting by Wii?

2009-01-25T20:53:00.001-08:00

There's something unnerving about the "Mii" of my three year old daughter being placed on the body of a hottie dancer. Should I already be practicing, "You're not going out dressed like that?"Thank you, Hottest Party 2.

Inauguration around the world

2009-01-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

Cool website that has the front page image of newspapers from around the world.Except for one paper, "tbt", that has a sideline Obama article next to a girl's field hockey team?

Qt goes LGPL

2009-01-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

I can't believe the Qt interface library will be switching to a LGPL license. I was actually driving home from work today thinking of new project ideas that would require a LGPL or BSD style license for Qt.Basically, this means people can write programs that use Qt without having to open source under GPL themselves, or buy licenses at a few thousand dollars each.I guess this means I should spend

Ancient works of (Vision) Art

2009-01-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

Noticed there's a lot of really old computer graphics stuff I've worked on at YouTube. I decided to create a group to bookmark any classics people can find.This would be fantastic if a couple people can farm for gold. I can say I dislike the process of adding videos to a group, but can deal with it to find a few more.

pystring

2009-01-06T23:34:00.000-08:00

My old Imageworks teammates have released the source to a handy library named pystring. This is a great and simple library for managing std::strings in C++. The name is a bit misleading because this has no dependencies on Python or anything; it is a pile of functions that match the Python str methods.std::string s = "Have a nice day";if ( pystring::endswith( pystring::lower( s ), "night" ){

Numpy documentation

2008-12-23T21:37:00.001-08:00

I learned that all the Numpy documentation is online, and it's wonderful. This is good stuff.

Wheat gouging

2008-12-07T09:02:00.000-08:00

Has anyone noticed that the wholesome and delicious Wheat Chex cereal is priced unusually high lately? Is it because of soaring demand for Chex Party Mix? If so, does that means this happens every time this year and I've never noticed? Unfortunately, now us who just want the cereal must pay the price for all these fair-weather wheat friends.

Python3

2008-12-04T10:31:00.000-08:00

Python 3 is apon us, although it seems real usage will wait for awhile. I'm a big fan of the language changes. I've been following the development from the sidelines, but there's a handful of nice additions I wasn't expecting.The ellipses literal "..." can be used anywhereDictionary comprehensionsI still remember filling out the bytes class at the 2007 Pycon sprint. Unfortunately that's about the

Fun day

2008-11-26T13:40:00.000-08:00

Got a day off to spend with the ladies at Disneyland. A great trip, and we managed to avoid any serious meltdowns. This was Kloe's first viewing of the Bug's Life theater. I couldn't stop chuckling as she was reaching out to the 3D butterflies. Most of the time she wanted me to cover her eyes. Perhaps it was a still a bit intense for her, but she's still talking about the funny bugs and the stink

Candy Preferences

2008-11-02T12:08:00.001-08:00

It's fun to see how some kids have a natural tendancy towards the chocolate-y treats, and others seem to prefer the tart and fruity kind.I guess I won't read much into it though, since it probably changes year to year at these early stages. Still, it is fun to play the mad scientist dad and see what candy choice are made under different conditions!

Image color picker

2008-10-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

Saw this fun website from Idee labs. Pick a palette of colors and you get an array of cool photos with the same colors. It's fast and pretty.

Javascript, the good parts

2008-10-07T21:12:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Douglas Crockford's Javascript: The Good Parts. As I'm learning Javascript for my own fun projects I thought this concept sounded great. Overall I was a bit let down by the book. There is a strong emphasis on "monkey patching" the built ins, which grates against my Pythony nature. The Javascript language seems crazy to me, there is some very cool stuff in there, but it is

A tour of KDE and XFCE

2008-10-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

In these days before the next Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex lands, I've been trying my hand at the different beta editions. I've been a Gnome desktop user for the past four years. Little regressions (and my rejected patch) have motivated me to check out what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Here is my momentary review. Xubuntu, with XFCE. I had high hopes going into this one. A

Music Builds

2008-09-29T19:58:00.001-07:00

With a bit of luck, Nichole and I made it to the Music Builds Tour. This is a group of bands touring for Habitat for Humanity. Excellent show, it's been ages since concerting. The good seats and free parking were all part of the bonus.Jars Of Clay. They did a good job opening to an empty stadium. Their current music is fair, but mostly lacking. I can't believe how strong their original album was.

Python with less exceptions

2008-09-25T22:54:00.001-07:00

I've been learning a bit of Javascript recently. There's a mix of cruft and coolness all rolled together.One thing I have always wondered about in my Python is if things would be easier if Python raised less exceptions for things like KeyError, AttributeError, etc. Just return a None result and let the program continue.With Javascript you have all that, all the time. And I dislike it! Python

Matterhorner

2008-09-22T22:54:00.001-07:00

I'm now the proud parent of a three year old Matterhorn bobsledder. Now that Kloe is 3 (!) she has finally reached the height for Matterhorn.Her first run was tonight and it went pretty well. We were all a bit shaken after the night time run, but it sounds like good times were had by all. I think we'll know how she really felt next time we are there.

Git revision control

2008-09-15T21:11:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure how accurate this is or not, but I keep seeing things about Git that don't make me a fan. The latest from Jelmer Vernooij statesAfter a few problems came up merging the two branches the easy way (they both have a directory called "source" and git doesn't deal well with renaming them to "source3" and "source4" respectively), we decided to replay the history of both branchesI think the

Political Update

2008-08-17T21:06:00.001-07:00

I'm not a big follower of politics. Recently McCain and Obama met at Saddleback Church to take turns interviewing with Rick Warren.The transcripts are a bit rough, but the questions are potent.McCain'smarketing comes through pretty strong; every answer comes withanecdotes and tales of his visits and efforts all throughout the world.You can tell this is where he is going to push against Obama. It

Pyglet Release

2008-08-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Pyglet 1.1 is released. In my mind, this is the best media game in town for Python programs.It looks like this release promotes moving the main loop into Pyglet itself. This is likely a good idea, as it's the sanest way to promote sane cpu control.My only complaint against it is that OpenGL is the only supported drawing method. The high level tools it provides are a fantastic way to get high

Siggraph 2008

2008-08-14T22:45:00.001-07:00

Wrapped up my visit to Siggraph 2008 in Los Angeles. Due to some surprises with my badge it was hard to get into the things I wanted to see. Seeing people was the highlight, as always. I seem to like the large User Meetings than most people I know.I am reminded I need to hang out with people who are awesome more often. No need to reserve this for Siggraph.

Gnome menu bugs

2008-08-04T21:46:00.001-07:00

The Gnome desktop has a menu for the desktop panel that launches applications and user directories. There is an obvious bug #538105 (obvious to me) where docking the panel on the left edge of the screen reverses the order of the menu items.My patch, along with others have the solution to this, but it is being held up in design committee land. This is unfortunate, because I feel I can strongly

Hadron Collider

2008-08-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

This series of photos shows the construction of the upcoming Hadron Collider. I am stunned by how large and intricate this all is. This is an unimaginable engineering feat.I don't think anyone knows what this is going to do when they finally plug it in. I'm hopeing against the creation of a new black hole.

Python Vector

2008-07-28T21:21:00.001-07:00

I have become semi-obsessed with making the absolute best pure Python vector class. I've discerned the highest competition comes from "pyeuclid" by Alex Holkner and "mathobj" by James Paige which spawned from an old Pygame mailing list coversation.My "criteria" for best are a bit more ambitious than either of these classes.Flexible arguments and operators acceptSingle numberNumber pair of any

Fat Man Tunes

2008-07-26T18:03:00.001-07:00

Game Audio Gallery: George "Fat Man" SangerI stumbled onto an older article about the Fat Man and his involvement in the classics of gaming. Gamasutra doesn't date their articles, I'm sure this is ancient. The gem is the included MP3s for Loom, Wing Commander, 7th Guest. Ah, the memories.

Karts

2008-07-19T21:20:00.001-07:00

Got to spend Friday afternoon in the cockpit of an electric racing kart at K1speed. These electric carts really scoot. I blame all my success on my time behind the wheel of the Mario Karts. This is such a fun time for groups, but I'm not too excited about the prices.We ran three runs, which seems to be an ideal chance to perfect the slide. Each run is 14 or 16 laps. My best lap from each outing

Cheer for Joss Whedon

2008-07-17T22:04:00.001-07:00

I'm two acts into the Dr Horrible's Singalong Happy Blog. This is the stuff that gives me hope for the future of entertainment. Apparantly I'm now a Joss Whedon fan of some sort.

Firefly

2008-07-15T22:37:00.001-07:00

I recently wrapped up watching the first and only season of Firefly. It sure took me awhile to commit to seeing it. I enjoyed it all the way through. Once the first few episodes settle the characters become consistent and fun to watch through their circumstances.Sorry to see it didn't make it, I guess if I had tuned in at the appropriate times it might still be around? I started the series by

The Pylons Book

2008-07-12T22:05:00.001-07:00

The Pylons BookI'm excited to see the alpha version of this Pylons books it out. Pylons always seemed like the logical progression for me from Django. I've been wanting to check it out, and the book looks like a good place to start.

Quordy for your phone

2008-07-10T23:41:00.001-07:00

My buddy Steve got his iPhone App game ready. Search for Quordy and get ready to play. It's kind of alike a digital version of Boggle for the iPhone.Knowing Steve, the production quality is high, only I haven't been able to try hands on yet.

Is this thing on?

2008-07-08T21:48:00.001-07:00

Had a lot of fun putting together the online store for my wife and her friend. Things are looking good over at Cupcream now. Got to really apply my Django tinkering, and got introduced to the fabulous jQuery. Everything worked out pleasent. I'm looking forward to the landing of the newforms-admin branch and future jquery ui releases.

online ice cream maker

2007-07-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

For fun I've been making an online ice cream cone maker. It's online now, and I think it's great.There is a simple site for just playing with it, but to get the most out of it, it's best to see it on Facebook.Go check it out.iCream

Metroid Fusion

2007-06-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

Finished off Metroid Fusion for the Gameboy Advance today. I think this catches me up to having played and beaten all the metroid sidescrollers. Love the formula for these games, a bit wary of the new 3D versions, but I'll probably try once it arrives for the Wii. Finish time was just under 4 hours, 60% items, probably quite average. This one gets compares well to the others in the series,

Mac Archives

2007-05-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

I find it surprising that in the year 2007 I am unable to find any tools in my Ubuntu desktop for opening SIT and DMG compressed archive files so prevalent on the Mac.Well, it looks like there is some unix support the StuffIt tools, so I'll give that a try. I hear DMG is the same or similar to the regular ISO format. Does that include compression? Don't make me look up the documentation for

Kids Shows

2007-05-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

The side effect of having a young kid is the love of kid's shows. The flavor of the season is Elmo's World. We're crazy into it at home now, out of nowhere. Pretty fun, but who knows what is next?

Giant whole foods

2007-05-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Went to the new and giant Whole Foods market in El Segundo. The place is large and full of organic food. Not sure what the deal is with all that. Almost half the store is dedicated to a food and deli court. Could eat and dessert quite well there. They even had shoes for sale?

Back from Mexico

2007-05-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

Such an excellent trip to Mexico. Most of the time was spent poolside or beachside.I somehow managed to avoid a raging burn, but am not entirely un-white.Highlight of the trip was taking the little Mrs. Kloe with us. She's getting to be a big swimmer now.

Python on OSX 10.5

2006-08-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

So the 10.5 features were kind of announced. I'm wondering what version of Python will ship? It's got to be version 2.4. Anything else would be surprising or disappointing. I'm sure I'll know soon.

Online

2006-08-07T21:11:00.000-07:00

Is this thing on? I have added drivel to my desktop, so perhaps this will get more updates. Here's the dirty five months update. Django looks great, Solarwolf code online, Shinners family site up, Overdetailed journal of Taiwan vacation, loving the 2006 update, ds makes me smile, mentoring pygame soc too.

css for success

2006-02-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

Getting dirty with css. Must resist the urge to table.

Splurge

2006-01-30T20:52:00.000-08:00

With a bit of outside encouragement, I've splurged on a fun new case for my computer. This is the most I've spent on a computer case like this, but I am enjoying it. It's an Antec P150 performance case, I'm surprised all the little nice touches on a high end case these days.

GBNYF

2006-01-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

For some reason this key sequence has been coming to me. It stands for "Group Build New Yes Fence". It was the magic keystroke that started about 3 seconds of processing and enabled the box select tool in VersaCad. This was on powerful old 286 machines with a blazing turbo button on the front.The year was 1991 and this was in High School drafting class. The best part about the class must have

Blogger?

2006-01-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm a little ticked at Blogger. I write nicle paragraphed posts. They look clean in the preview. Then they show up as monster text blobs on the site. Fortunately nobody reads these posts, but someday someone may want to and it's going to stink. Any clues?

Python codebase

2006-01-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

Being the "Python Guy" at work, I'm currently investigating ways to help our program startup times. Most of our python modules and packages live on nfs shared drives. Access to these drives is rediculous (slow). Our full programs take about 8 seconds to get rolling.So I'm trying to optimize the number of network hits. One approach is to modify the way Python finds each module. A directory miss on

My next idea

2006-01-07T18:39:00.000-08:00

So I've been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with my new Nokia770. Well my idea has struck. I want to use it to develop "group party" type games with Pygame. I've already created a few types of these we use regularly with a laptop connected to a projector. The Nokia handheld could now be added as a handheld client for the same game. But why stop there, I could come up with a whole

Nokia Gold

2006-01-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

My wife scored big awesome points for buying my a Nokia770 for Christmas. Unfortunately it was backordered until the end of January and all I got was an IOU picture. Suprise, surprise. On January 3rd got a package in the mail with my new toy.(I've linked to the UK site, since the US one is lacking any updates or news.)My quick review is that I'm dazzled by the device. I must agree with other web

Shopping Wrap Up

2006-01-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

Home from the final shopping run of the season. Was able to use the pile of Gift Cards and Dollars received for Christmas and Birthday. Need to shut down to install the additional 1GB memory I just purchased. Do I disable swap now that I have 2GB total? Questionable since running some of these games eats so much. Also brought home Civilization IV, which I'm a bit excited for, but currently

Day 1

2006-01-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome to more of a personal resolution than a location for tens or hundreds of visitors. It looks like there is a big year ahead of me, and no better way to remember than some form of recording.