geek

Talking is fun.

Posted on by grahams

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 Pencil 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.

That sucks

Posted on by grahams

The friends page that I integrated into my personal web page won’t show me entries done by friends who only allow their journal to be seen by friends only (because I can’t be ‘logged in’ and yank the page from the LJ servers, AFAIK).

I finished laying out the playlist plugin for SoundPlay last night, I even have the playlist placed and colored in the proper place, but I still need to make all the buttons, bells, and whistles work. One really annoying thing about the way WinAmp does playlist skins is that the buttons are all one sprite, so I have to divide the one sprite into several in code as opposed to having different sprites for each button. What a dumb thing. I also have to code a replacement for BScrollBar and BScrollView, so I can integrate the skinned scrollbar into the playlist window (it looks mighty lame with the default Be scrollbar in this mega-skinned window. :P

Software

Posted on by grahams

Ok, I really haven’t worked on any code since the last time I worked on AliveJournal (which I need to work on again). Today, I got fed up with that and started hacking again. This time, it is something which I consider substantial. I don’t use Winamp skins with SoundPlay, mostly because I like the way the BeOS native interface looks. But every time I have toyed with the idea, it really bothered me that the playlist skins were not supported. So that is what I am doing, and it is fun and I am learning and relearning alot about BeOS programming again.

Meeting my mother and grandparents for lunch tomorrow, which should be interesting..

Don’t throw me away

Posted on by grahams

I was reading this BBC article on the growing use of more advanced Artificial Intelligence in gaming. Most of the article focuses on the game Black & White, which is going to hit store shelves in about a week.

A part of the article really got on my nerves, however:


Game makers are turning to AI to make titles stand out in the highly competitive world of computer games. They like it because, if it is done well, it is a very cheap way of adding playability. Instead of spending huge sums on sumptuous graphics, long cinematic sequences, endless levels, characters and plots, a game can be made much more challenging with a bit of nifty programming.

The implication that advanced AI coding is somehow easier or cheaper than “sumptuous graphics”, etc… really bothers me. We have reached the point where programming is important to everyday life, yet it is still somehow regarded as some redheaded stepchild. Being that the team behind Black & White is comprised of some of the most talented artists, developers (who are artists as well, IMHO), designers, and managers, I can’t imagine that they picked up a copy of “AI for Dummies” and snarfed/barfed code to make their NPC’s smart. They instead put hours and hours into perfecting the level of AI that they desired. The article itself quotes Molyneux speaking about how hard it is to get AI right. Grumble.

Wonderful

Posted on by grahams

Greeting from BeOS. Ever since I came home I have been without network access on my personal PC, instead using my father’s machine (and its cable modem) when I needed to “get out”. A few people know that I have had a free shell account with a certain ISP from back when I worked at Sears. One of the reps of the ISP came in asking me to push their service, and in return I would get free PPP access. I said yes (even though it was probably against story policy), and they hooked me up with a free account.

Now, that was 6 years ago. :) They never took the account away, and so I have been using that account when I don’t want my real email address to get into the hands of spam harvesters. I had kinda forgotten that I had PPP access, and had assumed that they disabled my PPP access long ago. When I got home, I started thinking about it, and remembered that the PPP accounts for this ISP were seperate from the shell accounts, with different usernames and passwords. But I couldn’t remember my PPP password, and I wasn’t about to call their support asking to have it reset, so I just wrote it off.

I got an email from my father today…. I had apparently given him my username/password at some point when he was having trouble with the ISP he was using, and I figured he might want an alternative. My dad still had a copy of my password, so now I am dialed in.. Not that big of a deal, but it is useful in some respects, most importantly of all, I can sync to the Perforce repository at CSH again, which means I can start working on some of the projects again.

I am gonna go jump in the shower now… :)

Hehehehe… Try this, MPAA

Posted on by grahams

DeCSS in 434 Bytes

#define m(i)(x[i]^s[i+84])<<
unsigned char x[5],y,s[2048];main(n){for(read(0,x,5);read(0,s,n=2048);write(1,s
,n))if(s[y=s[13]%8+20]/16%4==1){int i=m(1)17^256+m(0)8,k=m(2)0,j=m(4)17^m(3)9^k
*2-k%8^8,a=0,c=26;for(s[y]-=16;--c;j*=2)a=a*2^i&1,i=i/2^j&1<<24;for(j=127;++j<n
;c=c>y)
c+=y=i^i/8^i>>4^i>>12,i=i>>8^y<<17,a^=a>>14,y=a^a*8^a<<6,a=a>>8^y<<9,k=s
[j],k="7Wo~'G_\216"[k&7]+2^"cr3sfw6v;*k+>/n."[k>>4]*2^k*257/8,s[j]=k^(k&k*2&34)
*6^c+~y;}}

A little pre-exam nostalgia

Posted on by grahams

Five years ago today, I was dialed into MOREnet, using that to telnet into a free ISP, where I had ftp’ed a 4.3 meg ZIP archive into /tmp and began rz’ing it onto my Amiga 500 at 9600 bits per second. I then took that archive, split it up into several 720k archives, and using sneakernet I took the files over to my fathers 486DX4/100. I reassembled the files there, unzipped them, and slowly began to realize that qtest was going to be a whole lotof fun… Of course, the fun didn’t really start until I took the game to CCM and we played our first network game… qtest became Quake, and the rest is history… qtest was also instrumental in meeting Chris, as girls are always impressed by kicking the living shit out of them in video games. Too bad she eventually got better than me. :)