Stevey's Google Platforms Rant

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: “Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.” Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.

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Life with frameworks

There is much suffering to be had by everyone involved. I have definitely been doing the whole rollercoaster of emotions in the past couple of days while trying to work with symfony.

I hesitate to say that I’m coming around the bend (because I’m sure I’ll just dip again not too far from now), but right at this moment I’m doing okay. XP

I really wish there were better documentation of reserved and/or pre-used function names… because it’s a pain to accidentally use something that was already being used for something else and then not getting a clear sign of how why what when where.

And I was super disappointed that the function “hydrate()” was already being used! I changed mine to “hydrateMe()”, but still. :(

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Probably hit the AIC kids with this near the end…

Probably hit the AIC kids with this near the end…

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I am certifiably insane.

[01:28:17] DITTO: WELCOME TO TIC: THE RPG.

[01:28:18] Kass: !challenge kass

[01:28:18] DITTO: kass has challenged kass! Challenge will expire in 1 minute.

[01:28:20] Kass: !accept

[01:28:20] DITTO: kass has accepted the challenge. Duel is beginning: kass vs kass! kass rolled 2 for initiative. kass rolled 2. kass goes first.

[01:28:25] Kass: !hand

[01:28:25] DITTO to kass: [0] Strike [1] Strike [2] Strike [3] Strike

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This would make a great test question for students learning about networking…

This would make a great test question for students learning about networking…

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CRUNCH

CODE CODE CODE.

DEBUG DEBUG DEBUG.

50 hours left until the opening of the exhibition… taking wagers on how many of those hours I’ll be sleeping. >_>

Actually, I’m not in that bad. I have monster sieges remaining to implement and last night, as I looked at my combat code that I first did nearly three and a half months ago… I realized my planning was such that creating siege encounters was far simpler than I thought it would be.

(Do you know what kind of amazing feeling that is, to realize that decisions you made months ago ended up being really intelligent and time-saving in the long run? >_> OOP is so. farking. wonderful.)

I still need at least five people to commit to playing every day. And I’d still like to carry out some focused testing tomorrow, but I’m not really sure what time I’ll be able to do that… -_-

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Angry laptop is angry

Boy, I don’t know what I did, but all of a sudden my laptop is having all sorts of schizophrenic problems. One moment it blue screens, the next it’s giving me errors I’ve never seen before, something about Vista Authentication. It wouldn’t even go into safe mode.

Eventually I got it to boot into Windows, not through any deliberate action but just by repeatedly trying to get in. But now I’m distrustful of its spastic behavior and have decided that I may as well reformat this damn thing too.

So I scrambled to get all my stuff backed up onto Spark’s external drive (convenient) and am about to start the long and probably painful process of doing first Vista Home and then putting Ultimate back on. I also think I want to do some partitioning, but I’m not sure where in the process that occurs, so will have to play it by ear. qq.

In the meantime, I finally got around to reformatting my desktop a few days ago and reinstalled just the bare essentials… and it’s been running very well, thank god. I think I even got an extra 5-10fps back in WoW. XP

[edit]
Great. After extended attempts at putting a fresh install of Vista on the laptop, I’ve determined that the problem(s) are all a result of fried RAM sticks. Finally ran pre-boot system diagnostics and the laptop went all crazy when it came to test memory and complained about DIMM_B… which is a RAM slot.

So… the summation is that my desktop, which I’ve had for 8+ years has broken down less than my laptop, which I’ve had for less than three years and already replaced the graphics card twice and currently suffers from what is probably a broken fan which probably also led to a melting hard drive / RAM sticks.

Laptops suck so much. I really wish the iPad wasn’t worthless for coding, because I’d totally get one then. Now I’m not quite sure what to do… repair might be more expensive than getting a new laptop, but I’d rather get a new desktop… but I’m not quite done with needing a mobile computer.

GRRRrrrRRrrRRrrrr.

Good thing I got all my data off first, and all my Schism code is safe on my SVN server. -_-

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… neat.

    if ($_POST['task'] == "Add Card") {
        require_once("logic/Deck/include_all.php");
        
        $card_class_name = $_POST['class_name'];
        $card = new $card_class_name();
        
        $ch->add_card($card);
    }

… thaaaat’s kinda cool…

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