I just captured a video of Boobie Teeth 0.15, the latest build. It’s up on YouTube.
Category: Uncategorized
GameMaker community forum gripe
Ok, I realize that GameMaker isn’t a hard core developer environment. It does serve a purpose though: to provide a more accessible means for aspiring game designers who are not primarily programmers to be able to give life to their ideas. This is a truly noble purpose, in my view and I will never say anything bad about GameMaker’s technical limitations as long as they’re limitations which must exist in order to achieve that goal.
That said, I am really starting to get frustrated with the GameMaker community. Not its members, mind you — the handful of interactions that I’ve had with GamMaker devs have been helpful and positive. But what is really driving me nuts in the community forums is the way people will post links to filehosting sites, and the link is dead because it’s a few months later. This is totally counterproductive to the goal of making a game dev environment that’s welcoming and forgiving to newbie programmers and non-techie types.
The forum thread is there, the tantalizing discussion about how awesome a solution is to just the exact problem I needed to solve is there, but the .gmk or .gex file that would make my day is gone. And not enough discussion around the gaping hole to figure out what the solution was that was demonstrated in the downloadable file.
But it’s not just an everyday occurrence. It’s damn near mandatory. And super frustrating.
.gmk files *usually* take up very little space, and if you don’t need all the resources embedded to create a full-fledged game, you can make *extremely* lean .gmk files that can provide a reference implementation of your nifty solution…. AND, we live in an age where 2TB hard drives cost under $100.
So, WTF? The GameMaker community would be so much better serving its users if it provided permanent hosting space so that discussion threads could remain relevant.
I really don’t understand it, I mean if you go to yoyogames they have graphic and sound resource packs that you can download. They’re of poor quality, and searching for anything in them is atrocious, but they at least have links that still point to extant resources. They even host all the games that people submit to the site.
Clearly they have the technology, why are they not using it in this way?
wp_theme update
I’ve switched WordPress themes. Formerly, I was using Thematic; now I’m using LightWord.
I really like both of these themes, they are high quality work. I don’t have a reason for changing, other than to learn though experimentation.
I did find that I needed to make a couple minor modifications to the default stylesheet for LightWord, to make the main article text a bit larger so it’ll be easier to read without having to resort to zooming the page. On my 15.4″ notebook screen, at 1680×1050 resolution, the default text size was uncomfortably small at 100% zoom.
I’ve tested it in IE8, FF3.6, and Chrome 5 on Windows 7, and I haven’t seen any problems so far. If you notice any, drop me a comment and I’ll look into it. Be sure to say what your OS and Browser are, and be as specific as possible about the problem.
Thanks!
Follow-up:
I’ve switched to the wider-layout configuration for LightWord, in order to accomodate YouTube videos. I think the narrower width layout is nicer for text, though, as it makes for a more readable line length for the main content column. I’m not sure if fitting default-sized YouTube videos is worth it, given that I can resize them down and that text is going to be the main thing people will likely be reading here.
How to get a comment approved
To date, my ratio of spam comments to legit comments is 35:0. I don’t get a lot of traffic yet, and I’m not surprised. But if you’re a real human reading this blog and are actually thinking about posting a real comment, here’s all you have to do to get it passed moderation:
1) Say something substantive. I don’t care if you agree with what I said or not, just say something substantive.
2) Ask a question.
3) Don’t post a suspicious url in the ‘website’ field. I’m probably going to turn this off entirely, but until I do just know that if you post some url that doesn’t look legitimate I’m not going to expose my readership to your probably-malicious url.
That said, if you’re a real person and have actually read one of my posts and have something to say about it, I’d love to hear from you.
msnbc.com: “show more text” links == still less elegant than scrolling
Recently, I noticed that msnbc.com changed from having paged articles to a single-page format. The way theirs works, when you get down to the bottom of where they would used to put a link to Page 2, they now have the text fade into the background, and there’s this link that says “Show more text”, and if you click it, it reveals more of the article, and you can continue scrolling down.
A screen capture of msnbc.com's "show more text" link - click to enlarge
I’ve been mulling it over for a few days now, and have come to a conclusion:
I have no idea at all what purpose this change serves.
Paging is an annoyance on most web sites. Browser windows have scroll bars, and it’s usually (almost always) better to simply scroll rather than break to a second page. Web sites often do paging, though, because it gives them the opportunity to display additional advertisements. Some designers will also claim that long scrolling windows are a problem for some readers, who either get intimidated by the length of the document, or are prone to getting “lost” in a sea of unbroken text. And some will say that an overly-long page just messes with the aesthetics of the site’s layout.
This “solution” that msnbc.com is trying offends me, both as a web designer and as a user.
First, and most importantly, as a user:
While I like this better than having to click through paging links, it’s silly to have to click a link to show more text on the same page. When I call up to a web server to request a web page, I want to get the entire thing on page load, and not have to be bothered with interacting with the page in order to make the whole article visible. I want this because it makes it quite easy for me to File->Save As… or File->Print and get the whole thing. Also, should I lose connectivity to the internet, or the server goes down, I don’t worry too much, because I already got the entire article. Lastly, I don’t have to interrupt my train of thought to click a link and wait for more article to be revealed; I can just scroll as I need to, and read the entire window’s worth of content without breaking the stream of the author’s prose. As a user, this is what is important to me.
As a designer:
Scrolling windows is a fine convention, and has been around for about as long as computers have had screens, and itself is based on a technology (the scroll) that goes back millennia. Scrolling isn’t broken. Ergo, it doesn’t need a fix.
What did need a fix was paging. When web sites started to generate revenue from advertising, it became a no-brainer from a business perspective to break up articles into many pages because more pages == more ad impressions == more revenue. But this was always a disservice to the user. Everyone knows it, and if a site abuses it too much and splits up an article into 20 pages of just a paragraph or two per page, people complain about it. Very large hypertextual documents may make sense to page, but the divisions should be sections or chapters, not simply a way to break up an article because it hit a certain word count.
What it seems like to me is that the designers who are working on msnbc.com grew tired of the convention of paging, and wanted to try something else. Probably someone in the design department was still fighting for paging, and used a justification that articles that are “too long” need to be “broken up” somehow in order for them to be “digestible” for today’s ADHD reading audiences. The limited height of the screen already does this, but never mind that. Back in the day, there were wars fought over scrolling vs. paging back in the mid-90’s, and people on either side became emotionally entrenched in their way of looking at how to deal with a lot of text on a page, and since paging largely won that war, politically there’s no way to go back to pure, simple scrolling. But they wanted to do something different, so they brought in this AJAX-y “click to show more text” link at the midpoint of the article. Basically, they’ve conceded that scrolling was better all along, but someone obstinately held on to the idea that not “breaking up” a long article hurts usability. So the “show more text” link is a compromise between the paging camp and the scrolling camp. But it is a no-win compromise, which doesn’t gain anything for the user, and doesn’t do anything for the ad revenue, either.
I think that “show more” links do have a place, but the main content of a page is not it. “Show more” works well on RSS feeds, for example — where there are many articles and no single one is the primary focus for the page. YouTube video description text is another good use of the “show more” link — the video description needs to fit in a small area, and the description is not the main focus for the page — the video is. But the description may be lengthy, and show more/hide works well in that kind of situation.
Update
It’s been too long since I last updated the site. I’ve been busy.
In addition to my usual projects at work, I’ve been taking a course on Linux System Administration, which has been going well. On top of that, work sent me and the other developers on our team to a continuing education program offered through Cleveland State University, so that we can all receive a certification in web development. Mostly this has been review for me, but I’ve been able to learn a bit more in some areas.
Also, I’ve gotten involved with Makers’ Alliance, a 501.c3 nonprofit startup whose mission is to provide a hackerspace for the greater Cleveland area. If you have any negative connotations from hearing the word “hacker”, please don’t. We are not the kind of hackers who go breaking into systems we don’t own without permission, although we may take things we do own apart and figure out how to make them better.
The organization is almost a year old, and we’re really just getting started. We are trying to find funding and a permanent location for our operation.
I just finished a project to create a course for teaching Cascading Style Sheets, which I will be presenting on 4.30.10 at our temporary location, the former Brunswick Flower Shop at 10550 Carnegie Ave., Cleveland, OH 44106. I’ve given the course the title Streetwise CSS, and it is intended to be an intermediate level class geared toward learning CSS for the real world. I am hosting a live example code page on this site, and the powerpoint slides from the lecture component of the course as well, if anyone’s interested.
I’ve also been spending the second Tuesday of every month attending .NET SIG meetings, hosted by Bennett Adelson in Independene, OH, in an effort to network with other professionals and keep up to date on Microsoft’s developer tools.
Last weekend, I attended Notacon 7, and had a great time attending many interesting presentations, and got to meet a lot of great new people and see a few old friends as well. Makers’ Alliance had a presence at the convention, hosting and setting up the open hacking room, where people could learn soldering, buy and assemble small project kits, and learn about circuits and electrical components. I didn’t get much sleep but I had a lot of fun.
In the next few weeks I am looking to get deeper into C# and am planning to revisit my DomeWrinklesCurl project, to implement a few features that I have on my project roadmap.
On May 8, I’m planning on spending part of my day at the CCAG show, which is always a lot of fun. I love seeing all the old hardware and the chance to play a few classic games or pick up a few for my collection.
Ipse Dixit
Currently, the tagline for this blog reads “ipse dixit”. That may or may not always hold true, but for now that’s what it says.
I took Latin in High School, and for some reason the phrase popped back into my head when I was setting up WordPress. I knew it meant “he himself has said it” so I figured it was an appropriate tagline for my blog.
Wanting to make sure I had the spelling right, I googled and found this wikipedia article which I quite liked. The fallacy of naked assertion is a good one to keep in mind when reading this, or any, blog. Or when reading anything at all for that matter.
Just because I might think highly enough of some of my words that I’d take the effort to publish them, does not mean that what I’ve written is anything more than “just something I said.”
By all means, don’t simply accept as true what you read here, just because I said it. That’s always good to keep in mind. Most things you read will implicitly convey a message of “Trust me, I’m right.” You don’t have to; and it’s probably better if you don’t.
I don’t mean to put you on guard or make you contentious; just be an actively engaged reader, thinking critically. A rare thing to find on the internet, I know. But to be encouraged nonetheless. Don’t believe everything that you read.
What to say?
Attaching your real name to a statement of any kind and putting it up into public space is a brave and daunting undertaking.
(You see stories in the news about people getting fired for stuff they put up on their social web, etc. Not always for doing something supremely idiotic. It gives one pause.)
The site serves as a place for me to play and experiment, as well as to show off what I’m capable of doing.
Accordingly, I’ll be blogging here about stuff as it pertains to my profession, which at the moment primarily is web development. I do other things in IT, too: server administration, user support, a little programming, and so on. So you might expect from time to time that I’ll be posting here on those topics as well. I expect at times I may also have things to post about general business, or “soft” topics like the software development lifecycle, and stuff going on in “the industry”.
I won’t be posting much anything of a personal nature here. So this is probably going to be fairly dry reading unless you happen to be interested in highly technical topics.
Obviously, I want my blog to be interesting, and I want people to want to read it. But I’m not going to write highly opinionated pieces intended to agitate and provoke a response.
On the other hand, I don’t expect that people will always agree with what I have to say, or that they’ll like it. I like to use clear, bold, vivid language, and have come to accept that at times this can cause people to take offense. This is seldom, if ever, my intent, but it is often an outcome.
Rather than try to please everyone (or at least not offend them), I have recognized that it is a good thing to speak clearly and to say what you mean, and accept what comes of it. “Playing politics” is a reality, but it should not cause “real” reality to become subservient to it.
Also, I don’t expect that I’ll always be right about what I say. Just because I express an opinion doesn’t mean that I’m committed to defending it to my death. One of the best things about communication is that it affords us with opportunities to learn. Learning quite often means learning that we were wrong about something.