Cleo
Our landlord's cat, Cleo. There is rather a lot of Cleo.
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07:10:59 PM,
Tuesday 10 October 2006
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Pretzels
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07:06:04 PM,
Tuesday 10 October 2006
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I just had a brainwave. In traditional pong games, if the puck comes up behind the paddle, it goes through it. My game is already using a 3D library, and I've already got something in there to make the puck bounce when it's dropped to start a point. If I made the paddles wedge-shaped, they could, if it was moving well enough, let it pass over them forwards. This would take a bit of work. Such paddles would have to have straight bottom edge. There would have to be drawbacks of some kind, they'd be lighter then square paddles, for one, and I'd have to make them similarly slow or easily winded. This would also make paddle height important... if your opponent is short enough, and you did it just right, you could shoot it right over them. Or off the table, which would be a penalty, or maybe even a forfeit. If they're too tall, they'll be too steep. If they're too steep, they'll need a high relative velocity to avoid sliding it back into their own goal. This would require quite a bit of jiggering with the physics, AI and graphics. Not something to do now, but something to think about in the future. It would be easier to implement than paddle rotation.
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10:28:54 AM,
Tuesday 10 October 2006
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I am working on my game! Particularly, I'm working on a GUI paddle editor. It's been just over two years since I last touched it. I've taken this week off, and plan to spend it seeing if I can get back into this. Hopefully, once I start it rolling again, I can keep it going and have a job at the same time.
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07:06:50 PM,
Monday 9 October 2006
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Auto part stores don't have bike racks.
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04:14:37 PM,
Monday 9 October 2006
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Probiscus
Seen on Castle Island, in Southie. Allegedly it has short front legs, but you can't see 'em here. Cameras are miraculous things. I sat watching and stalking this butterfly for a while before taking the picture, but hadn't noticed all the pollen clinging to it.
Also, can you see how this has been doctored? Guess before you click for the undoctored version, and let me know if you got it right. It's screamingly obvious to me, but I'm not a good judge.
undoctored
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(7)
01:39:01 PM,
Monday 9 October 2006
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A plague of pond snails has been visited upon my aquarium.
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(6)
11:20:46 AM,
Monday 9 October 2006
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All 4 candidates for governor oppose my favorite policy: an increase to the state gas tax; even the rainbow/green candidate. I just can't vote for a green candidate who opposes that; what would be the point? At the moment it looks like I'll vote for Deval Patrick. I can't vote for Healey because of her latest ad: an attack on Patrick, a defense attorney, as being pro-crime, with an awful, intentionally ambigious punchline: "While lawyers have a right to defend admitted cop killers, do we really want one as governor?"
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08:56:50 AM,
Monday 9 October 2006
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Two pictures show up repeatedly in Wodehouse: Soul's Awakening and The Infant Samuel (though that usually appears as a small statue): both were engravings by one James Sant, a victorian portrait painter who exemplified some of the excesses of his time, and according to the rather sniffy obit, a smash hit with the british middle class. In particular, anyone looking particularly innocent and beautific tends to be referred to as looking like one or the other. But the images themselves seem as though they may not be on the internet at all. Wikipedia has let we down with a thump. This is odd, since they were common enough not 70 years ago for Wodehouse to expect his readers to be on a first name basis with them. Popular culture really has an extremely short shelf life if it doesn't make it over some threshold or other. I suppose, were I a good internet citizen, I'd learn how to make a wikipedia page for him.
update: I found The Infant Samuel in a collection of biblical pictures: it's an even better example of what it is than I had anticipated.
2nd update: An original pencil sketch of his is available cheap on ebay. I'm restraining myself.
3rd update: found it!!
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(1)
08:30:54 PM,
Friday 6 October 2006
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The NY Times has a fascinating story today about a real-estate scam. this is the sort of thing that only comes out once the crash sets in. A boom breed all sorts of swindles that are hidden by rising prices until the market turns. Read it quick before it vanishes, but basically, a company bought 184 houses in a slum and sold them to a real estate investing club, that couldn't afford the mortgages, halfway across the country for more than twice their value, and the bank somehow didn't notice, and immediately sold the mortgages up the chain to Countrywide Financial, who is suing all and sundry. My sympathy for them is barely discernable; the abuses of easy credit can only be reined in if banks are more careful, the same way the banks are the real culprits in identity theft. Citizens cannot be expected to keep their SSN private, they can't, because it's a form of identification; the notion that people should somehow hide this number that the government keeps track of them, is completely crazy. The whole idea is that we faceless bearaucrats know you by your SSN. The only way banks will stop giving money out to random passersby is if they aren't allowed to recover it.
I don't have much sympathy for the credit scores of the swindled investors, either; (they were told they were signing applications, not mortgages) being willing to sign things without reading them* makes one a bad credit risk; a credit score isn't a moral judgement; it should reflect credulousness. I feel sorry for them, yes, but I can't really argue with people declining to loan them money in the future.
*I don't actually mean read. I mean, you can't read them. I mean look at them until you're fairly sure you know what they are**.
**and this doesn't apply to computer use agreements. I refuse to believe clicking 'I agree' is legally binding.
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(3)
01:33:18 PM,
Friday 6 October 2006
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Yay! Few minds changed by the Foley scandal; the citizenly inexplicably more worried about Iraq. Perhaps they* underestimated the intelligence of the 'great masses of plain people'! Someone tell Mencken; maybe you can't lose money, I mean, I'm sure the story sold papers, but maybe, just maybe, you can lose public office. And yes, I realize that I have made some objectively pro-republican comments recently. I can't help it. I'm contrary. I need to get to know some republicans to restore my political equanimity.
*This may be unfair; I'm not sure democrats are doing anything to fuel this fire, or whether it's going of it's own accord at this point. Some of them may have even tried to change the subject.
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12:49:05 PM,
Friday 6 October 2006
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Anyone know what the rationalization is, excluding managers from the right to unionize? It feels like there must be some reason, around wanting to keep the unions out of hiring decisions, but it isn't as though union members can be told how to do their job by the union, is it? I can't quite put my finger on it. I mean, all employees primary responsibility is to their employer, yes? Any employee could potentially cause inefficiencies in order to create work for the union. I suppose the more responsibility they have, the worse the sabotage? I'm pretty sure I'm missing something obvious here. What hold would the union have over dues paying managers, that they wouldn't over non-member managers?
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(2)
07:08:47 PM,
Wednesday 4 October 2006
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