Grogmaster

Links for 2009-07-07 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

inFAMOUS - The Evolution of inFamous' Story
Story notes about inFamous (contains spoilers).

Links for 2009-06-14 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Links for 2009-06-12 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Twitter Twitpocalypse Status

Links for 2009-06-11 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

GWT’s new Event Model – Handlers in GWT 1.6 « Lemming Technology Blog
Learning me some GWT.

Links for 2009-02-21 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST

Endowment Director Is on Harvard’s Hot Seat
"The endowment was squeezed partly because it had invested more than its assets, a leveraging strategy that can magnify results, both good and bad." Because when you only have $29 billion in assets, of course you need more.

Links for 2009-02-14 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST

The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age - Ars Technica
"I'm sure plenty of people swore they would never ride in or operate a 'horseless carriage'—and they never did! And then they died."

Links for 2009-02-03 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST

CSS should not be used for layout
Read this. If you still want to use CSS and divs, then justify yourself with a sound technical argument. I still do, and I have an argument. But this article will force you to confront that. (Thx, Sean!)

Photos for 2008-04-06 [Flickr]

nobody@flickr.com (OldMainstream) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:51:32 -0700

Platinum inFamous: Fun and Not So Hard.

Pete — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:23:00 -0700

I just finished a good run with the Sucker Punch PS3 game inFamous, getting all 49 broze, silver, and gold trophies and netting myself my first ever platinum trophy.

Brad Shoemaker’s review of inFamous on Giant Bomb convinced me to give this game a try, and a comment he made on the Giant Bombcast about the trophies being not too bad to get got me to try for all of them. I’m happy I did both; inFamous is a lot of fun, and the trophy hunt was enjoyable, just hard enough for me, and rewarding to boot (as much as video games can be).

A hallmark of inFamous, and a chief component in its enjoyability, is its pervasive forgiveness. You could cynically characterize this as “pervasive too-easiness,” but I’m a casual enough player to really appreciate it.

You cannot die from falling, even off of Empire City’s tallest buildings (slight exception being made for some specific platforming sections, where death + checkpoint is actually preferable to re-climbing anyway). If you miss a jump, it’s usually pretty easy to just climb back up the building you were on.
Missions and even some boss fights feature liberal checkpointing. This was very welcome especially after playing GTA IV, where missions almost exclusively restart from the very beginning, before the often-tedious travel sequences.
“Stickiness” to assist with landings and prevent falling off. I’m a particularly poor at platformers (Cait has labeled me “hole-faller”), but inFamous makes some very tricky (and vertigo-inducing) jumps possible by subtly keeping you from over- or under-shooting the jumps. (As I understand it this is similar to Sucker Punch’s previous Sly Cooper games.)
Radar for finding collectables. There are 350 “blast shard” collectables across the city, and 30–40 “dead drop” satellite dishes that contain audio recordings, and trophies for finding some and all of each. Any nearby collectables appear clearly on your radar when you “ping” it.

All told, the game succeeds in cutting out 95% of the potential frustration of playing it, with the remaining bit being just enough to provide a satisfying challenge.

Getting all fifty trophies was a balance of playing through the story and some nice sandbox play.

I had to play through the story twice, first making the “good” choices and maxing out my good powers, and then again to be “evil” and to up the difficulty to hard. I found Hard clearly tougher than Normal, but not overwhelmingly so, especially after gaining experience and skill from going through once.

The 350 blast shards seems daunting, but their appearance on the radar makes finding them through exploration tractable (compare with the 100 pigeons in GTA IV, which really require a map to get). I had happened upon nearly 300 over the course of just playing through all the missions, and the rest were a few hours of deliberately pinging my way over all the buildings, ground, and piers.

Some of the trophies require a bit of sidetracking into the sandbox that you might not otherwise do. For example, the Road Kill and Casey Jones trophies require you to kill 25 enemies while riding on cars and trains, respectively. 25 kills is low enough that, under the right circumstances, it doesn’t take too long to get these, and working for them can be a good change of pace from the missions. In any event, it’s a nice way to encourage and reward the emergent play aspects of a sandbox game.

Other trophies were about experimenting with all of Cole’s abilities. Get Off My Cloud requires 100 kills by knocking enemies from a height, such as a tall building. Going out and trying for this explicitly would take an annoying amount of time, so instead I just made sure to do a lot of knocking off buildings while playing through the missions and eventually got it. This was a strategy I probably wouldn’t have pursued otherwise, so I was glad to have it exposed for me. The same with Red Baron (100 airborne enemy kills) and Oh, You’ve Done This Before (50 “sticky bomb” grenade kills).

All in all, inFamous was a great deal of fun to play. It’s combat is easy to get into and satisfying to execute. I was happy to spend the additional time in the game to grab the trophies, and pleased that it was possible for me to be completist and get them all.

It’s unlikely that I’ll find another game that I am inspired to — and have the time for — complete in this way, so I’m glad to have the one platinum under my belt.

infoMania is Amazing

Pete — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:01:00 -0700

Not much more to say than that. If you like the Daily Show, watch infoMania on Current TV. Thursdays at 10, or clips on the InterYouTubes.

Legend of the Seeker

Pete — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:56:00 -0700

Just caught this promo on Hulu. I think that there is a land even beyond self-parody.

Wolfenstein 3D iPhone control scheme

Pete — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:25:00 -0700

John Carmack’s excellent Wolfenstein 3D Classic developer notes led me to check out the game on the iPhone. (app store link)

The writeup is a great read. Carmack obviously excels at writing video game engines, so it’s interesting from a programming standpoint, but I was pleasantly surprised by his game design insights. (Also, his bit about starting up quickly should be adopted by every iPhone game developer. Your stupid intro logos waste my time.)

The game itself is enjoyable, even though I don’t have any particular nostalgia for it. I’m only about three levels into it, and have been enjoying this look at first-person shooter roots.

What took a little while, though, was finding a control scheme that I was comfortable with. Wolf3D on iPhone began, as Carmack says in his notes, as a proof-of-concept for shooter control on the iPhone, so they offer a fair amount of customization.

As I don’t have prior familiarity with Wolfenstein, I’m not sure how it’s “best” to play it, but for my FPS comfort I was basically looking for a way to circle-strafe reliably.

I think the ideal layout would be a forward/backward and turn on one side, and a strafe (with fire icon?) on the other side. Since that’s not available, I came close by turning on tilt-to-move (and cranking it up all the way to 100%) and upping the thumb sensitivity a bit to 60%. This got the strafing and turning speeds about in line for a circle-strafe.

Nevertheless, the controls still don’t work for longer than maybe 15 or 20 minutes at a time before my hand needs a rest. The gripping and sliding on the glass just wears my thumb down too much before long.

Probably Our Last Game of Java

Pete — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:19:00 -0700

I was able to convince Cait to give Java one final play tonight. I think it was our last.

I find Java’s presentation incredibly compelling. Take a look at this picture from the Geek. Java has heavy cardboard hexes that you arrange and stack to build villages and jungles in a Indonesian valley. The verticality plays into the game mechanics: you move your builders around to jockey for the highest position in a village, and you can use tiles to cover up and join or break apart existing villages.

Java is curious for giving you rules but actually no indication for how to play the game. On each turn you have six action points (a hallmark of the Kramer / Kiesling “Mask Trilogy”) to spend on moving workers, placing tiles, drawing cards, and building palaces. Each of these can be used to score points of various amounts, so when you first start playing Java you have little sense of the overall flow of the game. You do stuff randomly to try it out, and since scoring comes regularly, a few points at a time, there isn’t any good feedback built into the system to tell you that you’re playing it “right.”

I squeezed one last game from Cait after going on BoardGameGeek and finding reviews and forums that actually explained how a game of Java should proceed. Specifically, the first several turns of the game should be spent placing the irrigation tiles and grabbing their easy points. Then, since you cannot place the jungle/village tiles on top of the irrigation tiles, they have effectively defined the board that you’ll play on for the rest of the game.

Knowing this, we tried once more and definitely had a better time of it. Getting irrigation tiles out early gave the session a guiding arc. The later moves, constrained by the irrigation tiles, felt less random. Cait’s still not a fan, though. She compared the dribbling out of bits of points here and there to playing basketball with just free throws. I’m enamored enough of the physicality of the game to still enjoy the experience, but will admit that Java is hardly a favorite.

Nevertheless, I find Java’s failure to provide direction out of the box a fascinating case study in game design. It’s interesting to compare it to, say, Agricola, which enforces a designer-proscribed flow by only revealing one new action each turn, or Mystery of the Abbey, which is entirely open-ended about what questions you can ask (not to mention the several different decks of cards to choose among) but that only serves to make it more rewarding when the strategy starts clicking into place. Even after we learned “how” to play Java, it was still a turn-to-turn exercise in local optimizations, with nothing great ever gained or lost.

Worker Placement: Agricola, The Pillars of the Earth, and Stone Age

Pete — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:22:00 -0700

Cait and I just finished our first two matches of Stone Age, which is the most recent of the new triumvirate of worker placement games (the other two being Agricola and The Pillars of the Earth). We had fun, and probably place it between the other two in order of appeal.

Agricola our the favorite because building a little farm is just a lot of fun. It’s even more fun with the clay pieces that Cait made. At the end of the game you can look over your land and just feel joy at the accomplishment. This sentiment is so strong that I felt incredibly dissatisfied at one of my recent wins. Even though I came out on top, I did so with a cold stone house, too many children, and pastures that I fenced in at the very end. It was not a fuzzy, pastoral scene.

Agricola also has three decks worth of Occupation and Minor Improvement cards, which, beyond just introducing variation for variation’s sake, really let you come at each game from a different angle. Yeah, some of them are ludicrously unbalanced (I’m looking at you, Field Watchman), but that adds to the fun and luck.

Variation for variation’s sake is The Pillars of the Earth in a nutshell. So much of it is micro-randomized:

Only 7 of the 9 Resource cards are available each round
For each round’s Craftsmen cards, two are available for purchase in the draft and two are on the board
4 Event cards are left out of each game
2 Privilege cards are left out of each game
Turn order is determined by drawing master builder pawns out of a bag each round

I can sort of see where the designer is going with this, but it just gives the overall game a fiddly vibe. The randomness forces you very much into the tactical end of that infamous continuum, so, by the end of the game, I felt like I hadn’t really accomplished much.

We’ve only given Pillars a few plays, so I’m not necessarily going to judge it, but there’s definitely a reason why we’ve been unable to put Agricola away while Pillars just hit the table once.

Stone Age has a lot of randomness as well, in that your resource acquisition is determined by die rolls (and also the cards and buildings come out in a completely random order), but it’s very much manageable luck. If you really need a type of resource, you just learn that you have to potentially over-allocate your workers to it to increase your chances of getting enough. The tools help a fair amount by boosting the die rolls that need it, and, if you do over-shoot, the game is forgiving of over-allocation. You’ll definitely be able to find a use for those extra resources on a later turn.

I’ve seen criticism of Stone Age that the winner is the one who rolls higher, but I definitely don’t agree. The randomness here adds more tension than anything, and over the course of the game the die rolls will tend to even out. And, if they don’t, and one player happens to dominate by continuously rolling 6s when panning for gold, that’s just an excuse to play it again. It can’t happen twice in a row, right?

Now that I’m starting to burn out a little bit on Agricola (Cait and I are at 22 plays), Stone Age is a nice bit of refreshing change. Cait has also recently figured out how to turn her Risk prowess into dominance at Nexus Ops, so I’m welcoming of a game where I have a shot at winning.

Phail.

Pete — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:09:00 -0800

Agricola

Pete — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:00:00 -0800

Cait and I have recently been playing Agricola and been having a lot of fun. Though all the little cubes and discs give it non-trivial set up and take down efforts, that just means that we’ve been playing at least two games in a sitting to make it “worth it.”

Agricola has scratched a nice itch for me that was unsatisfied by some of our other two-player favorites, which include Battle Line (which is a must-try for anyone who likes Lost Cities but could use more depth) and light war games like Nexus Ops and Battle Cry. Building a little farm is a fun activity, and there’s a pleasant level of player interaction in the “only one person may perform each action” mechanic. The other player can upset your strategy (either purposefully or inadvertently) even though the overall tone of the game is positive.

I wonder how much of Agricola’s popularity and charm comes from its length. At the end of each game I wish I could go just another round or two, which makes me all the more eager to play another full game again.

Notes About Git + SVN + Google Code

Pete — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:57:00 -0800

I wanted to do some hacking over vacation, so I decided to pitch in and implement a feature request for Guice. Here are some of the things I learned about using Git with Google Code’s Subversion repositories:

Recommended Google Code Git Initialization
(run this in an empty directory that you would like to be a repository)

git svn clone -s --prefix=svn/ --rewrite-root=https://guice.googlecode.com/svn http://guice.googlecode.com/svn .

Note: This will pull the entire SVN repository back to its beginning. The -r argument can be used to limit the pull.

The --rewrite-root line is there so that you can remove it if you get membership status on the project and want to commit.

Additional Notes

“Develop with Git on a Google Code Project” is a pretty good intro article that covers the very basics of using Git and connecting with Google Code.
“An introduction to git-svn for Subversion/SVK users and deserters” seems to be the most comprehensive description of setup and use cases of Git’s SVN support.
“Git SVN Workflow” is also a nice and friendly read.
Fink’s git-svn 1.6 package seems to be broken, at least for Mac OS X 10.5. It bus errors on launch. I found a fink-users thread that comments on this but provides no solution. I grabbed it from MacPorts instead, and that worked with no problem.
Passing the --prefix=svn/ argument to git svn init makes it easier to differentiate between server-side branches and local branches.
In theory, you cannot change the SVN repository URL later. In practice, it may be possible. This is particularly important for Google Code because if you check out the repository with HTTP, you cannot then commit because committing requires HTTPS for the authentication. Compounding this problem, you cannot (as far as I can tell) check out with HTTPS unless you are a member of the project. In this light, it may make sense to check out new projects using --rewriteRoot (as mentioned on the GitSvnSwitch page) pointing at HTTPS. I ended up just re-creating a new repository and using git am to move a commit between repos, as described here.
Use the --username argument to git svn fetch when checking out with HTTPS. You’ll be asked to type in a password (which is the random characters from your Google Code profile). Git will then save this information somewhere (I’m not sure where), so it means that you won’t have to memorize the Google Code password, or even re-specify the --username if your Gmail username differs from your username on your computer.
Remember that git svn dcommit will commit to the repo once per Git commit. This will likely annoy other people on the project, so it’s best to either use git rebase -i and squash everything, or do a git reset svn/trunk and then make a single commit of the index (don’t forget to re-add new files).

Installing Graphziv on Mac OS X

Pete — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 14:52:00 -0800

I’m playing with Graphviz on the Mac. Unfortunately, the latest official download, 2.20.3, gives the following error message when run from the command line:

dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _pixman_image_create_bits
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/graphviz/libgvplugin_pango.5.dylib
  Expected in: flat namespace

dyld: Symbol not found: _pixman_image_create_bits
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/graphviz/libgvplugin_pango.5.dylib
  Expected in: flat namespace

Trace/BPT trap

The solution is to go to the downloads directory and download the next-most-recent release, 2.20.2.

Flaw: Constructor does Real Work

Pete — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:59:00 -0800

Flaw: Constructor does Real Work: "Fundamentally, “Work in the Constructor” amounts to doing anything that makes instantiating your object difficult or introducing test-double objects difficult."

Misko has a great article about making sure that your constructors permit your class to be reasonably testable. Read the whole thing, his detailed examples are very informative.

topgit Means Never Having to Wait for Reviews

Pete — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:32:00 -0800

I’ve been using git for a little while now at work. Some rather clever Googlers have rigged up a tool that syncs a local repository with Perforce, so I can do local development and version control with git and then check the final CL in to the depot.

Over the weekend I started using topgit (README), a git wrapper that takes most of the work out of managing dependent “topic branches.” The gist is that you mark branches as depending on one another. Then, when you modify a branch, you can use the tg update command to propagate those changes to any branches that depend on it.

I’ve been doing a lot of large changes and refactorings recently, so what topgit really means for me is never having to wait for code reviews to keep working.

The basic workflow goes like this:

“refactor” is the name of my new branch, “blogger” is the trunk

$ tg create refactor blogger
hack hack hack
mv mv mv
add add add
commit commit commit

now mail out the CL for review
$ gitwrapper mail -m reviewer

In a pure Perforce environment, I couldn’t continue working on this code at all until the review came back and I could submit. With vanilla git, I can of course git checkout -b new-branch and keep going, and this is fine most of the time.

Where it starts to get sticky is when my reviewer has comments. No big deal, though. I can just git checkout back to the refactor branch, make those changes, and commit them.

Of course, I now need to update my new-branch so that I’m working from the latest intermediate state. git merge refactor handles that fairly well (sometimes I get pedantic and use git rebase) and I’m back to coding the new feature.

topgit supports exactly this pattern of development by automating the “update the new-branch” step. If I created the new-branch branch with tg create, then I could run tg update to merge in the latest versions of all of new-branch’s dependencies.

To continue, we have:

git checkout refactor
tweak tweak tweak
git commit -am "fixes from review"
git checkout new-branch
tg update
code code code

“All” is a very operative word in that last sentence. With topgit, a branch can have several dependencies, forming a DAG, and it will recursively update each one of them. This means that I can have several independent changes, with each out for review in parallel, but continue development on a new change that relies on all of them.

topgit works by keeping a separate reference branch for each topgit-managed branch. When you run tg update, it merges the dependencies into this branch, then merges that into the normal branch. This gives the added benefit that you can easily git rebase against the reference branch to clean up your commit graph.

Palin Markov

Pete — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:30:00 -0700

Sean is back with more Markov: Sarah Palin

This seemed like an entirely plausible quote:

They cannot be allowed in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us to remind Russia that it's in their country and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say never again will we be taken advantage of.

Word up in the House, &tc.: Another version of “Lukey”

Pete — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:29:00 -0700

Thanks to Lala.com, I found another Great Big Sea cut of “Lukey,” recorded with The Chieftains for their 1998 album Fire in the Kitchen (which is here attributed just to Chieftain Paddy Moloney). It’s appropriately raucous.

And now, a test of the emergency Canadian music <embed> system:

CrossOver Chromium: Chrome (kinda) on a Mac

Pete — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:57:00 -0700

CrossOver Chromium runs the open-source build of Chrome with Wine to make it work (more-or-less) on an Intel Mac. It's very Windows-y, as one would expect (you'll need to use the Control key for keyboard shortcuts, for example) but it gets some amount of the job done. The visual display is a bit rough at items, with weird flashing as things get re-drawn.

But it's enough to write this post, at any rate, though it did crash once. I need to get the autosaving going in this new post editor...

Thx, Scudder!

A Cascandinavian

Pete — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:01:00 -0700

Thx, Dad!

Give, Yo.

Pete — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:36:00 -0700

American Red Cross

Don’t overlook the “Where the Need is Greatest” category. That gives the Red Cross the freedom to use the money to best serve their mission.

Spreading the word: Is Sarah Palin Pro-Choice?

Pete — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:56:00 -0700

Cait made a helpful new website: Is Sarah Palin Pro-Choice? Click for the answer.

Also, fair shot she and McCain to rollback Griswold, too. Hope you like babies! (Or not having sex.)

In which e-commerce confidence is not inspired

Pete — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:35:00 -0700

I’m ordering a replacement charger for my drill because I lost my old one. Here is the exact entirety of the only e-mail I’ve gotten from the company to confirm my order:

EVEN THO IT MAY WORK THE TOOL OR APPLIANCE OR TOY READ THIS FIRST!!
CHECK YOUR ALL USED BATTERIES BEFORE USING THE CHARGER! USE A VOLT METER TO MAKE SURE THAT THE USED BATTERY HAS NO LESS THAN (.6) VOLTS LESS THAN THE STATED VOLTAGE OF THE BATTERY.
EXAMPLE: IF A USED BATTERY THAT SAYS IT IS FOR A 12 VOLT TOOL READS WITH METER 11.6 OR HIGHER IT IS (IN MOST CASES) A GOOD BATTERY GO AHEAD AND CHARGE THE BATTERY.
IF THE USED BATTERY READS WITH A METER 11.5 OR LESS IT IS A BAD BATTERY AND NEEDS TO BE REPLACED!
CHECK YOUR CHARGER WITH A VOLT METER TO MAKE SURE IT IS PUTTING OUT THE CORRECT VOLTAGE!
IF THE CHARGER IS PUTTING OUT A UP TO 2 1/2 VOLTS HIGHER THAN STATED VOLTAGE (RELATIVELY STEADILY) IT IS
(GENERALLY) A GOOD CHARGER AND OK TO USE TO CHARGE YOUR BATTERY.
EXAMPLE: CHARGER STATES 12 VOLTS. WHEN USING THE METER IT READS 14.6 IT IS A GOOD CHARGER.
IF THE NUMBERS ARE MOVING ALL OVER NOT NEAR STEADY AT ALL OR LOWER THAN 11.6 OR HIGHER THAN 14.6 CHARGER MUST BE REPLACED!
YOUR CHARGER IS YOUR MOST DELICATE TOOL! IT MUST NOT BE DROPPED, HIT OR GET A VOLTAGE DROP OR SPIKE!
NEW BATTERIES NEED TO BE CONDITIONED TO GET A GOOD READING BEFORE USING!
TO CONDITION A BATTERY BEFORE FIRST TIME USE CHARGE FOR FOUR DAYS WITH A DAY OF REST BETWEEN EACH CHARGE!
THIS WILL CONDITION YOUR NEW BATTERY FOR LONGER LIFE!
A PLACE LIKE RADIO SHACK WILL TEST YOUR USED BATTERIES FOR YOU FOR FREE!
THERE ARE NO RETURNS FOR ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT.
ALL RETURNS MUST RMA ASSIGNED NUMBERS ON THEM OR THEY ARE NOT ACCEPTED!

Is even a "Dear Mr. Hopkins" too much to ask?

Luckily for them, only two other companies on the Internet appear to sell this product, and my first choice, the official Black and Decker parts website, had a bug that kept me from logging in at all.

Braid is Sweet. So is Chronotron.

Pete — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:29:00 -0700

If you have an Xbox, go play Braid. The gameplay and presentation are near-perfect and, as far as I can tell about a third into it, well-deserving of the megascore.

For more time-bending fun, try out the Flash game Chronotron on Kongregate (it’s free!). You play a robot who can go back in time. This lets your present and past selves interact with each other and the environment, sometimes several times over. It’s much more explicitly puzzle-y than Braid, and less touchy-feely artistic, but its gameplay is brilliant.

OmniFocus Tip: Linking to Gmail

Pete — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:24:00 -0700

Gmail is my alpha and my omega at work. (I didn’t get much done on Monday.) Almost nothing I do is not either prompted by an e-mail thread or significantly informed by one. And, in my attempt to get things done, I try to pour all of those tasks from my inbox into my good friend OmniFocus.

This can present a problem, however, when I’m working through a context and realize I need some of that information from an e-mail in order to complete an action.

Handily enough, Gmail is very clever about creating unique URLs for all of its “pages” by appending URL fragments. When there’s an e-mail conversation I’ll need to refer back to when working on a project or specific action, I just copy the URL from the browser and paste it into an OmniFocus notes field. Example:

https://mail.google.com/a/google.com/#inbox/11bc36975726453b

I used to use a combination of starred conversations and search (inbox is, of course, at zero), but linking directly to the thread works several hundred times better.

The one tiny problem with this technique is that it will open a new Gmail page rather than re-using an existing one, but that’s no more than a few seconds wait. Gmail itself is quite capable of handling two windows open at once with no consistency issues.

Next Vacation: Laptop

Pete — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:54:00 -0700

I resonated a bit reading John Dickerson’s recent Slate piece giving the presidential candidates lifehacking advice for their vacations. The piece touches off from Obama’s recent admission to Tory leader David Cameron that he searches for chunks of time during the day to just think.

Dickerson’s advice is to take the opportunity during vacation time to think, and he zeroes in what the candidates do for their best thinking:

Barack Obama will probably spend some of his vacation writing. It's clear from his autobiography, and from the model answers he gave students when he was a law professor, that he processes ideas by working them out on paper. … McCain would design the opposite regimen for his vacation. He's not a writer; he's a talker. … On his vacation, maybe McCain could schedule off-the-record bus tours with reporters, editorial writers, and experts in various fields.

Having just come back from a short vacation of my own — which was certainly pleasurable but leaves me feeling even more rushed and hectic heading into the week — I wonder if camping in remote Maine was necessarily the best possible vacation.

I’m struck by a bit of a paradox: given that I am in the admittedly extremely lucky position of loving what I do for my job (coding and blogging), my vacation from it took me away from my best thinking. Of course, it also took me away from what I don’t like about my job (see Clichéd List of Knowledge Worker Gripes, Volumes I–III), and for that I’m quite grateful.

I think that for my next vacation, that campground in Maine is still a good idea, but I should bring a sand-proof laptop and copy of Coda.

The Rock-afire Explosion at ShowBiz Pizza Place

Pete — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:10:00 -0700

As with all important things, should should consult the exhaustive Wikipedia article on the subject. Choice quote:

Eventually, the ShowBiz restaurants themselves were converted to Chuck E. Cheese's locations, in a process called "Concept Unification". The company had decided to shift its focus away from animatronics and more towards video games, food, and quality of service.

You can bid to get a song performed by the band. Coming next, Arcade Fire.

Make sure that you watch at least through the rap break.

You’re the birthday, you’re the birthday, you’re the birthday boy or girl.

Important addendum:

There are a few restaurants still using the Showbiz Pizza Place name and animation. All are located outside the United States, and have no connection to the original company. Known locations are in Lebanon; Dubai, UAE; and Kuwait. [via Wikipedia]

It gets better: The ShowBiz Pizza fan site. Exhaustive!

Daft Hands: Stronger

Pete — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:47:00 -0700

Pork and Beans led to Daft Hands and Daft Bodies, and then I found this:

Blogging is easy when you just post YouTubes.

More Pork and Beans: Tay Zonday and Brian Bell

Pete — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:33:00 -0700

Stupid Weezer broke the embed I had of the full video. This one is fun, though: