Thanks to all the people who wished me a happy birthday out there…. It is really appreciated and sometimes you lose scope of how many friends you really have.
In other news, it is amazing how easy it is to fill up 6 gigs of space with music…..
My sisters gave me:
Happy Birthday to a Great Man: Christopher Walken.
My Parents gave me an Archos Jukebox 6000 Portable MP3 Player! It is a 6GB MP3 Player and USB Hard Disk. Unlike many portable MP3 players, you can copy onto and off of this device without limitations. It seems to work great, and the installation was a cinch (jack in the USB cable, show it the drivers, and voila: new drive letter). Another cool thing about it is that you don’t have to use special software to put MP3s on it. It shows up as another drive on your system and you just use Explorer like you would any other drive. It took me about 3 minutes to copy over an album or so of music, so it is fairly fast given it is a USB device…. So far I like it more than the other similar devices I have seen: Namely the Personal Jukebox or Creative’s Nomad Jukebox. The PJB is awesome, has a huge screen, but it expensive, and the Nomad just seems thrown together (just ask soco :). Neither of those devices suck, but I think that the Archos unit is definately the best bang for your buck.
Way-cool!
Going out for lunch with Chuck…
In case anyone wondered what the “Not sending the BMessage” problem I was having with my skinned button control… When I overrided BControl::AttachedToWindow() I forgot to invoke the original AttachedToWindow (which meant that the Target wasn’t being set as it is supposed to).
What’s new? First of all, Black & White is by far one of the most beautiful, well produced, fun, revolutionary games I have ever played. It definately deserved all the hype it garnered.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a good movie, don’t get me wrong, but it is incredibly overrated. I was reluctant to go see it because it was sold as a fighting/kung-fu film. But then many, many, people convinced me that it was poorly advertised and it wasn’t truly a kung-fu movie. Well, those people are simply wrong. It is impossible to truly call this movie anything other than a kung-fu movie. But that doesn’t make it bad, it just isn’t my cup of tea. The fencing/sword scenes were exquisite, some of the best I have ever seen. But, as I suspected, the wire work was as lame as I presumed. It completely breaks the suspension of disbelief, simply because it doesn’t look natural in any form. If humans were able to fly around, I can’t imagine we would do it by flailing our legs back and forth… But whatever…
Crouching Tiger was a fighting movie… Perhaps it was a fighting movie with great acting and direction, and perhaps it was a fighting movie with a slightly larger plot framework than other fighting films (although I don’t think the plot was that strong, but it is still a fighting movie. And again, that doesn’t make it bad… It was a good film, and one of the best movies of the genre I have seen, but it just pisses me off that people tried to sell me on the movie by convincing me it wasn’t a fighting movie.
The Truck just delivered my copy of Black & White, so I guess I know what I will be doing for the rest of the day. :)
Going to bed now… I spent a few hours tonight working on the playlist editor… I solved the BPictureButton flickering bug; i stopped using BPictureButton. :) I instead wrote my own derivative of BControl that instead takes a BBitmap and gives me way more control over the whole situation (and gets rid of the silly need for the BPicture, which I still don’t quite understand).
Anyway, my “SkinButton” class works exactly like BButton except for one thing, it isn’t firing off its BMessage when it is clicked upon. I am calling Invoke() in MouseDown() as the docs tell me to… I will have to crank on it tomorrow, but I am happy with what I accomplished tonight. I think I have my GUI teeth sharpened again. :P
Time to go to peaceful slumberland now, perhaps after reading some bookage. Hopefully sleep will come easier tonight.
I spent quite awhile talking to Chris and Jared last night, which was cool. I laid some foundation and got the first button working on the playlist last night (it is the close button). One annoying thing is that the button (BPictureButton) flickers irritatingly when the window is resized, so I have to figure out what I am doing wrong there (any ideas, Soco?).
I felt like supreme shit last night, and it just got worse throughout the night. I had so much trouble sleeping, I estimate I eventually fell asleep around 5am, and I slept past noon today. The good side to that long sleep is that I don’t feel anywhere near as bad as I did last night, which is good. I headed out to do some health and beauty aid shopping. I needed Shampoo, Conditioner, and Razor Blades. I also got a Styptic Penci l on the recommendation of Midgetor. A year ago I never cut myself shaving (I shaved like Edward Scissorhands, just ask Rory), but something changed during that time, and I cut myself in almost the same spot every time now… I guess I am getting thin skin in my old age.
… Here is a screenshot of the playlist work I have been doing for SoundPlay. As you can see I haven’t gotten rid of the BScroll* stuff yet.