I decided to organise my releases in a friendly fashion so I've set up a forum at http://rigfoundry.com/forums/ for basic information, user interaction and general banter.
I finally resigned about 2 weeks ago. After 2 years and 6 months. It was a pretty cool experience considering all the additional I had to do as a software developer - Linux/Windows server administration, technical support, database administration - in addition to actual software development. I'm actually preparing to go to university to take Computer Science so I decided to quit. Currently doing freelance work here and there, though, and it's very rewarding.
Yeah, I attended the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) event held here in Nigeria and it was pretty fun. I participated in Warcarft 3 and Trackmania Nations Forever (very fun game, btw) I only picked up Warcraft 3 a month prior to the event, so I was pretty much a newbie compared to the other participants. I got pretty good at the game, but what killed me at the competition was the fact that I wasn't very conversant with Night Elves (race selection was Random) so I finished up at 5th place. I could use Humans, Orcs and Undead. But not Night Elves. Lameness. On the other hand, I did take second place in Trackmania. The second place prize wasn't very encouraging though, but all in all, it was fun.
I also got around to coding a Javascript date picker control from scratch. Sadly, the available solutions are either rather crappy, or require you to pay before you can use them, or both. Which led to me writing my own! Good thing is I had done something similar in the past (wrote a calendar system in PHP about 3 years ago) so I had something to base off on, and I was done within a few hours. And I suppose it's rather good, and easy to integrate into existing code. I have a demo online. It's free for everyone to use and modify, etc. You can download the whole thing here. As for improvements, I'm thinking of implementing month selection - something similar to how it's done in Vista. Let's not forget the obligatory screenshot.
In conclusion, I'm so looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight.
You know, Yahoo! Widgets is actually pretty neat. I heard about it a while back but I never paid much attention. Works on both Windows and Mac too, although there are some platform-specific quirks, but nothing that affected me.
I couldn't follow through with my intended Truveo/Google Maps app because not all videos have the country specified in the result set, which is actually very essential to the whole thing. Had to come up with something else. VideoSeek is a video search widget that I developed, which is also an entry for the Truveo Developer Challenge. I kept the whole interface pretty simple and straightforward. Less options = less worries, right?
I've submitted the widget to the Yahoo! Widgets gallery and it's currently awaiting approval. Meanwhile, you can download it directly. You will need to download and install the Yahoo! Widgets application before you can use the widget.
By the way, I haven't forgotten about the Half-Life 2 giveaway yet. I've been rather occupied with a lot of things so I haven't been able to run the random selection yet. I'll get around to it soon enough.
Behold! My first entry for the Truveo Developer Challenge. What does it do?
"Want to know what the most popular videos on the Internet are? Easy! Simply install the Top Video gadget and you have instant access to the videos that everyone is watching at the moment, within the past day and within the past week. And you can watch the videos right from your Windows Sidebar meaning there is no need for you to open multiple browser windows just to keep up."
I've returned to the country where the Internet isn't as fast, and where there is no constant supply of electricity, and where a lot of things just don't work as they should. Fun. Total journey time from Vegas took about 17 hours, including a 3-hour stopover at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. I wonder though, why isn't free wifi provided at the Atlanta airport? They had all sorts of services where you had to pay $7.95 for 24 hours or thereabouts, and you couldn't even subscribe on the spot. This should be fixed.
Anyway, following the announcement of the Truveo Developer Challenge, I'm currently working on two entries. One involves implementing a Windows Sidebar gadget that displays the "Most Popular Video on the Internet" (pretty much), while the other is basically a web application that uses Google Maps to display the source (location) of the most recent videos found. The first one is taking shape while I'm still trying to work out the details of the latter. It's quite similar in concept to an app that I saw online a while back (the name escapes my mind at the moment) which shows the location where a Wikipedia article was edited within the last few seconds.
The Algorithm Finals was rather interesting as none of the finalists were able to finish up all three problems. It actually took quite a bit of time before the submission for the 250-point came in, by Petr. Apparently, the problems were actually much tougher than the ones in the semifinals.
A couple of hours after the system phase was over, the TopCoder founder, Jack Hughes gave a speech thanking the members, staff and sponsors for a successful event. This was immediately followed by the announcement of the winners.
Marathon Match Psyho
Algorithm tomek
Design Pops
Development romanoTC
Studio oninkxronda
The winners for the OpenAIM competition were also announced. Unfortunately, TriviaFrenzy didn't get anything. It turns out people don't like trivia games.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that it was really great experience. I'll be looking forward to TCO next year. What I'm not looking forward to though is my trip back to Lagos, which should take a total of about 17 to 18 hours.
The final day is off to a slow start with the algorithm finals starting at 10am. Meanwhile, there'll be two corporate forums by On Paint Technology and AOL with the first one already in progress.
Finally, after three days of fierce competition, we will find out who the winners are!
The Component Development Competition eventually came to an end at 5pm bringing a close to all of the competitions except for the Algorithm Finals which holds later today.
There were a couple of insightful presentations by Eli Lilly and VeriSign, and there were the Crowd Sourcing round table and the TopCoder developer forums which were also pretty interesting. Particularly, I was impressed with the scope of what VeriSign is actually involved in.
The Eli Lilly Burnout Revenge competition also held and it was pretty cool.
With just today to go, all I can say is that it's been a really fun and great experience.
We're off to a start with the second part of the Studio Design competition and the Component Development competition. The Studio Design finalists have about 4 and a half hours to finish up with their designs, while the developers have about 8 and a half hours to get their implementations up and running - including the test cases.
The Room 3 Algorithm Competition ended with SkidanovAlex, lewha0, marek.cygan and bmerry taking the first, second, third and fourth positions respectively.
Just before the wildcard round (where four runner-ups after the third position from each room compete against each other with the winner advancing to the final), the following finalists were through to the finals: Burunduk1, ACRush, John Dethridge, Petr, Eryx, vlad89, andrewzta, ardiankp and Yarin advance to the finals.
I left the Mirage soon after the wildcard round started because I was rather exhausted and had to get some sleep. tomek emerged as the winner of the wildcard round and also advanced to the finals.
The algorithm competition finals will be taking place on the final day, Thursday, the 15th. Meanwhile, the second round of Studio Design and the component development competition will be taking on day 3.
In other news, Eli Lilly will be organising a Burnout Revenge competition today which involves orchestrating the greatest car crash ever, or something along those lines. I tried my hands on the game and it was pretty cool. It's going to be fun. They're giving away and iPod Touch, an iPod and an iPod nano (I didn't really catch this) to contestants who come in first, second and third places respectively. I'm not sure what the judging criteria is but I'll try to find out.
A couple of hours after the completion of the algorithm competition for the second room, the finalists off the third and final room were introduced, as usual, prior to the commencement of the competition.
Room 2 winners announced
Additionally, photos for Day 2 can be viewed here.
There was an AOL Presentation right after the algorithm competition advancers were announced. They talked about Truveo, which is, put in simple terms, a robust platform for searching videos. Truveo basically crawls the web for videos and stores all sorts of useful data during indexing which simplifies the search process and makes it easier to find videos that you are looking for. AOL are also providing an open API that can be used with the Truveo platform. The Truveo Developer Challenge was also officially announced which involves developing a useful widget using the Truveo API. Sounds interesting.
Meanwhile, the second set of finalists for the Algorithm Competition Semi-finals were introduced. The Coding Phase is still in progress and it appears every one of the finalists has been able to finish up with the 250-point problem so far.
We're off to a start with the first room of the alogrithm competition semi-final. The competitors were divided into three batches, referred to as "rooms".
After the Coding Phase was completed, ACRush came in first place with 1360.54 points, with Jan_Kuipers coming in second with 1025.63 and a distant third by Burunduk2 with 692.68 points. Fourth, fifth and sixth places were occupied by malcin, Burunduk1 and Klinck with 620.99, 620.26 and 610.21 points respectively.
After the Challenge Phase, ACRush still maintained first position with 1410.56 points with Burunduk1 second and malcin third with 1204.43 and 620.99 points respectively.
The advancing finalists were announced after the System Testing Phase was completed with Burunduk1 taking ifrst place and ACRush and John Dethridge as runners-up.
The Welcome Reception was pretty nice, which took place about an hour after the with some speeches by TopCoder staff, people went around getting to know each other and there was plenty of good food to go round. I was pretty exhausted so I couldn't write an update at that time.
The sponsors (AOL, betfair, NSA, BT, Verisign, Eli Lilly) were all set up and apparently, they're competing for more attention from coders. Every one of them have gaming systems with large screen displays setup, except for the NSA. Small wonder no one really likes them. Okay, just kidding.
Looking forward to the algorithm semifinals tomorrow. It's going to be fun. We're just getting warmed up! Additionally, AOL is organising a scavenger hunt for a chance to win an iPod Touch. Looks like AOL is in the lead for grabbing everyone's attention so far.
I put something together to help out with knowing what games are available.
AOL System: XBox 360
Games: Guitar Hero III (although I've only watched it being played, this game is awesome), FIFA 08
betfair System: Nintendo Wii
Games: Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports
BT System: Nintendo Wii
Game: Mario Kart Wii
Eli Lilly System: XBox 360
Game: Burnout (I'm not sure of which version)
Verisign System: Nintendo Wii
Game: Mario Kart Wii
Meanwhile, some more gaming at the event
And did I mention that Guitar Hero rocks?
Chances are there'd probably be a six-way Mario Kart showdown. I'd like to see that happen.
With the Marathon Match over and the Component Design competition coming to a close in a few minutes, we are getting close to the end of the first day.
Meanwhile, every one of the sponsors seems to have set up a gaming system, so there's apparently lots of fun to go round.
The day's been great so far.
I'm currently working on a way of integrating appropriate photos from the photo album with each individual post. I will be looking into the Picasa Web Album API which I just came across.
The Component Design Competition has just started. Meanwhile, the Marathon Match competitors have just taken a break for lunch. Met argolite, who has consistently been the top designer for quite a long while now.
I also uploaded some videos to Youtube, but the video compression is awful so I will upload them elsewhere and update this post as soon as I do so.
It took me quite a while to find the Mirage, but thankfully, I didn't have to go through too much trouble. I'm just simply going to do incremental updates and will have to implement organisation of posts based on time (I was too lazy to do this the last time I touched the source for this blog).
In any case, I arrived at the Mirage just in time to catch the Studio Design Competition in progress. This is my first time here, and I have to say it is pretty cool. Nice, huge and fun. The Marathon Match also started on schedule at 9:00 am. Everything is on schedule so far. The Component Design competition will be starting in about 30 minutes.
If there's one word I've got TCO, it's "awesome." It's really nice seeing people from all over the world coming together and interacting.
So far, I've met TheCois, d000hg, mess, and ivern and a bunch of others whose handles I haven't been able to get ahold of, yet.
The sponsors are also setup, and apparently, the most fun appears to be coming from Verisign and betfair, each of them having a Wii setup with a large TV screen. Pretty cool. Also the first time I got to play with a Wii and it's very, very nice. I'll have to look into obtaining one as soon as possible.
I will be creating photo albums based on the day; the album for today can be found here. I will also be updating the album with tags and descriptions regularly.
The entire trip took about 19 hours - about 12.5 hours from Lagos to Atlanta, 2 hours to get through Passport Control (talk about being efficient) and 4.5 hours from Atlanta to Vegas. I got to the airport around 11:15pm Vegas time on Friday, the 9th. It's been pretty nice so far. The weather is alright. The Internet is fast! Everything is pretty well organised. Of course, I'm just stating the obvious, but compared to Nigeria? Well, I can say that Nigeria is lacking, and that's me being modest.
I couldn't take any pictures during my trip since I hadn't got a camera during the trip. Had to pick one up (Canon Powershot SX100IS; initially planned to get the Powershot SD1000 but they were out) at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Not exactly what I wanted, but the picture quality's great, at least. I find it weird that they have the products on display locked up, so you have to get a store attendant to actually help you pick up the items that you wish to buy. What's with that? That's got to be one of the most inefficient ways of shopping, ever. I'm staying at the Palace Station Hotel and it's rather nice here.
The TopCoder Open starts in a few hours at the MGM Mirage, which is located on the strip and I'll be writing my own perspective of the event for the next 4 days. I'll be taking a lot of pictures and probably record some videos as well. So stay tuned!
What? That's right. I'm giving away a free copy of Half-Life 2 and a free copy of HL2: Episode One.
Why? Because I can. Okay, I just purchased The Orange Box and since I already own copies of Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode One, I can give out the extra ones as gifts on Steam to whomever I choose.
What's the catch? There's no catch. The publicity would be nice, though.
Who's eligible? If you're eligible to own a Steam account, then you're eligible for the giveway.
What's required? Just a name and a valid email address.
How will the winners be selected? Pseudorandomly. Simple random selection from a list, really.
What are you going to do with my information? Sell it for profit. Okay, kidding. You don't need to provide a real name if you don't want to. However, I would assume that the email address that you provide has to be associated with a Steam account.
Any important dates? Entries will be accepted up till May 14, 2008. The winners will be announced on May 15, 2008.
I turned 21 eleven days ago. There were lots of caek to be had! It was a pretty alright day. Being 21 doesn't feel any different from 20, and being 20 didn't feel any different from 19, except for the occasional back pain that I started to experience recently. It's either my chair or my bed that's killing my back. I'll be getting around to replacing both soon.
I implemented some additional features in TriviaFrenzy (my entry for the OpenAIM competition) which include a general chat section, the ability to save preferences for future visits (handled automatically) and retrieval of the user's buddy list. Making use of wimas3 (an ActionScript 3 library that interacts with WebAIM for Flash/Flex/AIR apps) made a lot of things easier since I opted for the WebAIM API. I initially spent a lot of time trying to decipher how to make proper use of the WebAIM API, especially the request-signing part (Curses!) and then wimas3 was recommended. If only I had discovered the library earlier; but it's all good.
So I've been playing Eve for a while now and I actually do like it. I initially started with a trial account in December during the holiday period and didn't get to do anything productive for 14 days! Okay, maybe less, but yeah, I was addicted to the game. It's pretty neat. I paid for a month's subscription and got into it for a while, but actually decided to take a break after the first month because for someone who isn't usually productive, productivity was going down the drain. Okay, I lied. I had to use the cash for some other useful resources. I renewed my subscription a week ago, and yeah, it's still nice. I'm currently considering getting into PvP (Player vs Player) matches, after I finally raise enough money to purchase a battleship. Eve is fun.
I still haven't obtained the Orange Box (Blasphemy! I know), but I'm working towards that. I'd probably organise a competition to give away free copies of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One since I already own them and I'd be getting extra copies as part of the Orange Box package. I'm too lazy to do a proper competition so it's only going to be a simple program to pick a random name from a list of names.
In other news, I subscribed to the Microsoft Action Pack after I stumbled across this and all I can say is that it's awesome! For $295, you get quite a lot of software to use. I just received the April update yesterday which includes a license for Windows Vista Ultimate. I agree. Microsoft rock!
I'm working on an entry for the OpenAIM competition. It's basically a trivia game with general questions ranging from word scrambles to the meanings of baby names. I've been able to get it to a complete state so far.
You can access the application here. Before you can start playing, you need to authenticate using an AIM account. If you manage to come across any errors, please let me know. I'm hoping a lot of users can test it out so I can monitor how it performs under load and make necessary optimisations.
On to the technical details. I'm using Flex 3 for the front-end and C# for the server application. The client basically connects to the server through a socket and performs actions when a socket data event is raised (indicating that data was received from the socket). The server application is being hosted on a Linux box using Mono - it's pretty neat that I built the application on my Windows box and ran it without any problems on Linux. Essentially, the server simply connects to a MySQL database and fetches a random question/answer pair which is then sent to the connected clients. The application then acts based on the responses received from clients within the specified time limit. Pretty simple and straightforward. I'm also thinking of adding chat functionality, but we'll see.
And the usual screenshot (Flickr's pretty neat, btw):
It's bloody hot. And overrated. And I'm not coming back. Oh, yeah, I had to come here to keep an appointment with the US embassy for my visa application (I got the visa, btw) because all dates for March and April were booked in Lagos. Srsly, what gives? So I'll be attending the 2008 TopCoder Open which holds in May (not as a finalist, though, as I didn't make it to the top 12).
In other news, I had a rather interesting conversation with someone which I thought was pretty funny and had to share (name changed to protect identity, obviously). Of course, I am me.
[code][me] Well, it's not every day you meet Nigerian men.
[me] Obviously.
[B] lol, you'd be pretty surprised.
[me] I see.
[B] I actually had brunch with one today
[me] Well, it's not every day that you meet Nigerian men like me.
[me] Winnar.
[B] And I meet one basically every day in London
[me] Oh yeah
[me] London's full of 'em.
[B] Yeh
[B] I simply adore when they come up to me
[B] Asking if I want them to take care of me
[me] lol
[me] I don't do that.
[me] That's..
[me] ugh
[B] Fuck no I don't want any strange man taking care of me.
[me] Srsly
[me] What sort of person uses that sort of pickup line?
[B] They're totally serious, too
[B] "You look nice. I want to take care of you."
[me] lol
[B] They make "nice" sound like a dirty thing.
[me] hahahaha
[B] They want to take me home and feed me
[B] One actually said so
[B] Seriously, if that's how you learn to court in Nigeria...
[me] ...
[me] Don't look at me.
[me] I don't do any of that.
[B] Am I talking to any other Nigerian here?!
[me] Depends.
[me] Am I one person or two?
[B] -_-
[B] Don't even start with me.
[me] o rly
[B] ya rly.
[me] no wai!
[B] I will hit you, don't think I won't.[/code]
Quite a reputation we have. I'm thrilled! And one other thing...
Dear Internet,
Why is Nigeria not on the list of available countries when I want to purchase a product online?
Kthxbi.
Does a lot of bad things to you. I won't be able to make a submission for the GameDev 4E6 contest, and I'm skipping Digital Overload. My work load's been a lot recently, and I haven't had enough time to do a lot of fun things that I want to. Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you're actually trying to make a crap load of cash.
And I have absolutely no plans for the year. Or actually, I do. I plan to attend Digital Overload, the TopCoder Open (if I qualify) and I should start with school. Sounds nifty.
I saw I Am Legend, Hitman and Shoot 'Em Up over the past couple of days. It is recommended that every sane person should see Shoot 'Em Up. It's a very interesting overdose of fun, it's superb! I especially like the skydiving shooting scene. Best scene in a movie, ever! I Am Legend was pretty good as well, with the atmosphere very thrilling and convincing; and Hitman was average.
I get two weeks off of work. I could make good use of that. I don't have much planned for the holidays, so I'm pretty much going to keep doing what I like to do. Speaking of plans, I think I'm going to have to drop out of the 4E6 contest due to the fact that I just haven't been able to bring myself to do anything. No design document, no concepts, nothing. I may change my mind later on though, but for now, it doesn't look very likely.
Meanwhile, I've done some poking around with the Android SDK and it looks rather interesting. I have to say that I haven't been able to do anything concrete though, but the Developer Challenge looks rather tempting. I might have to take a shot at that. And I really want to get my hands dirty with XNA 2.0. But I don't really like the fact that it still requires VC# 2005 considering the fact that I upgraded to VC# 2008. Maybe I'd have to resort to reinstalling.
I've been playing through Half-Life 2: Episode One, but I got stuck in Urban Flight after I destroyed the gunship. The gunship was crashing, and then stopped midair, and Alyx freezes. She doesn't move, talk or anything. However, I can move around, change weapons, shoot, etc. It's weird. And sort of creepy. Someone I spoke to suggested that I should restart the chapter, which I'm going to do, which is a bit of a bummer. Someone else suggested that it might be corrupt game content, which is going to be really painful if it is. Hopefully, simply restarting the chapter would fix the problem. I also ordered for the Orange Box so I can play with Portal and Episode 2 as soon as I'm done with Episode 1. I'd have to find a good connection before I can dabble with Team Fortress 2.
Over the past few months, my daily commute time going to work and back home has pretty much risen to about 3 to 4 hours from ~1.5 hours. Why? The roads are absolutely terrible. I'm not even sure I should be calling them roads, anymore. The potholes are completely responsible for most of the traffic, and are at least a foot deep, it's amazing. I refuse to be broken!
I'm currently planning to actually go to a university *gasp*. I intend to study Computing at the University of Bedfordshire. Not that I'm too keen on university, but yeah, I guess it's just one of those things I have to do. Besides, I could drop out and get rich halfway through the course. People have done it before, so no reason why I shouldn't be able to.
The year's almost over; seems to have gone by very fast. Odd. I could've sworn January just ended. I planned to get rich and yeah, I'm almost rich! I'm telling you, almost!
So the sixth edition of the GameDev.net Four Elements contest is now running until April 2008. As usual, I'm going to try to participate and see if I can get an entry completed (tricky, I know). So the four elements are Ponies, Accountants, Crystals and Explosions, and I'm having all sorts of crazy ideas at the moment.
In other news, I've been working and engaging in some TopCoder development contests (would be nice to earn some extra cash).
I'm also currently working on a .NET application for MySQL server management, called MySQL Server Manager, which is a personal project. Shameless plug...
Obviously, the interface is practically a rip-off of SQL Server Managment Studio Express, but we all know I was just simply borrowing ideas *cough*. It's coming along pretty nicely, though.
I know, it's been around for a considerable amount of time now. I just started getting my hands dirty with it, and it's very good. For the uninformed, Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web (in other words, an alternative to Flash, finally).
One thing I've also noticed is how Silverlight doesn't seem to use as much resources as Flash. I haven't really done extensive testing though, so I may not know for sure.
I got to see the Bourne Ultimatum, which was rather good, but left me feeling a little bit empty at the end, and Rush Hour 3 (with a date), very entertaining flick. Everyone should see Rush Hour 3.
Now I'm looking forward to Resident Evil: Extinction. Other releases that I'd also like to see in passing include Superbad, 3:10 to Yuma and Shoot 'Em Up, in no particular order of preference.
Ouch. I came across this yesterday while I was passing through the Intarwebs. You would think security should be one of the strong points in a bank. Screenshot was taken on August 30, 2007 at 12:34 UTC+1.
The PS3 is not the kind of thing that I should be spending money on, really, but Metal Gear Solid 4 simply looks awesome. And I still haven't got MGS3, yet. Here's the trailer video from E3 2007; pretty old, but still entertaining. The gameplay video should be lying around somewhere on Youtube as well.
Yes, I know. I've been multitasking a lot lately. What's new, you say?
I got myself a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pi1505 laptop: 15.4" WXGA screen, Intel Core Duo T5200 1.6GHz, 1GB DDR RAM, 120GB HDD and DVD-RW. It's lovely. Comes with Vista. And Vista is absolutely lovely.
I purchased Half-Life 2: Episode One over Steam, but I just haven't got around to downloading it to play yet. Hoping to do so within the next few weeks. Should be fun, I hope. Speaking of games, I'm also really looking forward to Assassin's Creed. Here's why:
In other news, I finally got around to seeing some movies recently, too: Ocean's Thirteen (good), Next (good), The Hitcher (meh), Saw III (gory), Eragon (average-ish). Over the next few weeks, I should see Shooter, Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, Fantastic Four 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I'm also looking forward to Rush Hour 3 and The Bourne Ultimatum.
If you're in Lagos, Nigeria and you're looking for a fast (relatively anyway) internet connection, go for the Starcomms EV-DO plan. I just signed up for this last week and it's been impressive so far. There was just a bit of downtime the day I purchased it, but after that, I've been experience blazing fast downloads. I was able to achieve a maximum speed of 208kB (kilobytes) per second. Now, that's fast. Uploading data is rather poor, though. In any case, it's a very good investment. Should cost you about N25,000 (approx. $195) for the hardware, and you get 15 days free when you subscribe. Subscription's just N15,950 (approx. $125*) a month for 24 hour access. Not all areas in Lagos are covered, sadly. My verdict: Superb.
I got to see Spider-Man 3 during the opening weekend. It was entertaining. However, it wasn't as spectacular as I had expected it to be. I guess there was too much drama and a lot of different scenes giving mixed feelings. Maybe that was the problem. The numerous mixed feelings. You should see it either way. It's still good stuff. And slightly awesome.
In other news, I obtained the following games:
- Command & Conquer: The First Decade
- Clubhouse Games DS
Mmm... C & C. I loved this game from the first time I played it. The series started to go downhill though from Red Alert 2. I tried Renegade for the first time when I got First Decade but it wasn't too impressive, and Generals shouldn't have been named C & C, although it's fun. All in all, it's a very good package. Enough entertainment to keep me busy for a while.
Clubhouse Games is PURE awesomeness. I think I've learnt how to play like 20 card games, games that I never had a clue of how to play. That and there are other fun board and action games as well to keep you occupied. If you've got a DS, this is a recommended title.
Work has also kept me pretty occupied. I feel like a drone now. I keep doing software and web application development for the bills although I really really want to do game development. Right now, game development is just a hobby for me, so I guess I still have to wait a while longer.
24 is still awesome (gotta love ep. 17 where Jack took down all the bad terrorists)! Lost just got more interesting. Heroes is good stuff.
*To those who get much higher speeds at much cheaper prices in the developed world - Europe, America, Australia, etc... I know, it's pretty gay, but yeah, that's how it is over here.
Devseek is a freelance marketplace for programmers, designers and general services which I have been working on for quite a while now. It's marked as being currently in beta, as there are still some issues or quirks that I may not have come across that need to be ironed out. The whole site should run smoothly, though.
So if you're looking to outsource your work to developers from all over the world, feel free to register and start posting your projects.
In other news, the gubernatorial elections over here (Nigeria, just for those that have been living under arbitrary rocks) took place on Saturday. My thoughts? Oh, yeah, this country definitely isn't moving forward at this rate. I just can't, for any reason, rationalise the violence. It's insane. Click me to find out a bit more. Can't things just go on smoothly with no glitches? Ah, well, so much for democracy. I wonder what goes through the minds of the perpetrators... "VIOLENCE! Ooo, fun!"? Meh. Moving on. Let's hope the presidential electoins would be different.
There is now an RSS feed. As a matter of fact, it's been there since the day after the post about the updates. Search functionality also implemented. Comment spam prevention measure as well. All you need to do is enter the characters as they are shown in the image when you're posting a comment. I know, it's pretty much an incovenience, but I hope you can understand. :)
At work, we launched Geeplaces. It's pretty much a property search engine, currently containing only Nigerian properties, but we intend to expand globally, eventually. I think it's a pretty good application, myself. Currently, the user interface is all Flash. We know this could be a bad thing for people with slow connections and/or computer systems. A Lite Edition (purely HTML/Javascript/CSS) will also be deployed. However, I cannot say when.
In other news, I got a Motorola SLVR L7 phone. It is a very solid, lovely phone. The only thing crappy about it is the quality of the photos that the camera takes, but I've always never really needed a camera on my phone anyway, so it's pretty much a moot point. All in all, it does what I need. Plays MP3s, browses the Intarweb, and I can have up to 2GB of storage.
Happy New Year. I guess. Well, it's already March. I had planned on updating Antinormal since January, but, no, things got in the way.
An enumeration of what has happened/is happening (as the case may be) to me so far:
- I've been busy.
- Never got to complete my 4E5 entry.
- Even more busy with projects.
- Wasn't able to update rigidgames.com.
- Discovered and got hooked on some TV shows: Prison Break (superb), Lost (rather interesting) and Smallville (not that great, but okay).
- Mmm 24 Season 6.
- Lost an 80GB hard disk. Mmm backups.
- Got a 250GB hard disk.
- Got a UPS to protect my entire computer (read: the hard disk) from the erratic power supply.
- Considered the XNA DreamBuildPlay competition. I very much doubt I'll be getting a completed entry in, but we'll see.
- Being busy is now officially evil.
- Met a girl, long story cut short, had to move on.
- Currently considering getting a new phone.
- Got a promotion.
- Discovered Heroes (no opinions, yet).
- Still busy.
Yeah, I'm great. And the year seems to be quite fast. Antinormal is still under reconstruction. Some features "might" not be working. There is no RSS feed, yet. There is no spam protection for the comments section, yet. Don't be afraid to break anything.
You haven't seen an update in a while. Here's one.
I ran a Google search on my name (Akinwale Ariwodola) recently (who doesn't these days?) and came across the Artists Against 419 site. Turns out a couple of domains that I registered for fraudulent clients a couple of years ago were listed in the Fake Banks database. Needless to say, said clients were reported to the appropriate authorities a long time ago. So yeah, I asked for my name to be removed citing the fact that the information is no longer relevant since I requested for the domains to be deleted by the registrar, but they refused. Bah. I despise arrogance. In any case, I could make use of the free publicity. I'd probably re-register the domains and make some money from traffic. Sounds like a plan. *evil laughter*
DISCLAIMER: I have never been involved in fraudulent activites nor do I intend to be involved in the near or distant future.
In other news, I finally got a Nintendo DS Lite. It's a very sweet toy to play with. Trust me when I say this, you should get one, too.
I'm currently playing Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance for the PC. I had to go through just a bit of horror before I could actually get to play it. Other horror stories that I read on the support forums scared me as well. In any case, for those interested in the hardware it's running on: Pentium IV 2.0GHz, 768MB RAM, ATi Radeon 9600 Pro with 256MB DDR, Integrated VIA AC'97 audio. So far, I'm enjoying it. Really looking forward to completing the game.
I'm also contemplating whether or not to redo the backend of Antinormal using CakePHP. CakePHP is a very, very beautiful PHP development framework. I've been using it for a current pet project of mine for the past month and I have to say this, I highly recommend it to anyone who intends to do serious PHP4/5 web application development. It's versatile, it's flexible, it's easy.
I haven't been posting updates for a while due to the fact that I've been busy with a lot of things. I finally got to install my Beta 2 download on Wednesday. There was a bit of a problem with the installation though. When the setup program reached the Completing Installation stage, it got stuck there. I rebooted about 4 times and waited for about an hour and a half before I decided to go online to search for help. Meet Google (oh, I bet you already have). Anyway, I was able to get some pointers to disable some hardware as this may result in Windows setup not going past that point. Apparently, it's at this stage that Windows tries to add your hardware. It turns out that my PCI Realtek 8139 NIC card was the culprit. Therefore, I can conclude that the most important thing that's needed from Windows setup is feedback! Anyway, after removing the card, I rebooted my system and everything else went smoothly. I later plugged in the card after my first boot and Windows detected the hardware succesfully.
My impression after the first boot, "Wow!" I'll have to make it clear at this point that eye-candy is a very good thing. I was a bit skeptical about the new Aero interface, but now, my mind has changed, completely. I like it. It's a bit sluggish on my current system configuration, though, probably due to the fact that I haven't purchased my graphics card yet, and my RAM isn't up to the initially desired 2GB. I believe the performance can be improved with a few tweaks, and I'm currently looking into some useful ones.
I've been able to find my way through the whole system without much trouble. I think the Start Menu is a very huge improvement over what we have before. Also, I like how the Control Panel has been reorganised, the Welcome Center is a neat idea, and the Performance Rating and Tools is also nifty. I can even set my local language (Yoruba) in Regional and Language Settings ffs! I find that rather beat.
The only beef I have now is with the in-your-face security. It's getting in the way. Hopefully, eventually, the restrictions can be lowered so that I can run my antivirus update program (I use Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic), and install programs that I need.
Overall, I'm very impressed. And here are some screenshots :)
In other news, the Post Comment functionality for blog entries is available for use now. Cheers.
Apparently, AntiNormal got discovered by spammers recently. I was just browsing through the database today and noticed an impossibly huge number of comments. Turned out most of the comments were spam. There's no check for potential spam in the post comment system at the moment, so I have to take it down temporarily. Sorry for the inconvenience, folks. This will be fixed as soon as possible. Also, in other news unrelated to the abuse of AntiNormal, thanks to spammers, the host had to take a few extra measures for spam protection which has completely broken the pages in the archives. I'll see if I can implement a workaround for this. My verdict? Spammers should get maimed. And left to bleed to death.
The fifth edition of the GameDev.net Four Elements competition. I'm participating, and I hope that I can get a decent entry in. I set up a wiki on Rigid Games to document most of the things (if not all) that I intend to do with my entry. So far, I've got a story for the game. I'm still working on other details and will update the wiki as I make progress.
Moto4Lin, KMobileTools. I obtained a USB cable for my Motorola V220, and discovered that I had to pay quite a bit (which I didn't have) for BVRP's mobilePhone Tools. The tools above only work on Linux. Moto4Lin for transferring files, and KMobileTools for contacts and synchronisation. Although they're still pretty much in the beta stage, they're pretty solid and work very well. I haven't had any troubles whatsoever using them. Worth checking out.
Another great tool for Linux I found a few days ago is rdesktop. Accessing a Windows remote desktop from your Linux box. That's just sweet. Installed and tested it, and what do you know? It works flawlessly. I'm impressed.
In other news, work's been pretty good. And I've been good. Nothing seems to be going very wrong these days. At least, for now. Cheers!
I've been using Vector Linux as the primary OS on my new machine as I can't afford a license for Windows XP. It's been a very lovely experience. The good thing is I've got all the software I need to use. The bad thing is, I can't play my computer games, but then again, I guess those can wait. I'm getting work done, which is vital. Essentially, I use Firefox+plugins (web), Eclipse SDK (development IDE), MPlayer (for multimedia), XMMS (music), XChat (IRC), GAIM+AMSN (instant messaging), and the Skype Linux client (which, much to my amazement, works very well). Yeah, I'm good.
Windows Vista Beta 2 was released for public consumption a few days ago, and I've been downloading it. About 1.1GB completed so far, I've got 2GB to go (at a steady rate of about 15kB/s). I intend to dual boot with my Linux installation, which wouldn't be too much work (I hope). I guess it's generally a nice thing being able to test Vista for free before I finally decide to buy it. Oh, yeah, you should also check out the minimum system requirements before you start downloading. Somewhat steep, huh?
Yup. I got a new ISP. Very reliable service compared to the previous ones I've been through. It'd be nicer if I could afford more bandwidth though. Current offering is just 64/128kbps up/down, which is okay... for now, at least.
I'm getting there. I can get the CPU to run at a clockspeed of 2.66GHz but that'll take the temperature up to 75 degrees celsius which is a bad thing. I'm looking to purchase a more effective heatsink to counter this problem. Also, I'm currently considering obtaining an AGP GeForce 6800 card. Preferably the GS series. Was previously eyeing the 6200, but I guess I'll just wait a little longer.
I just beat Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, a second time, after I found out that there was an alternate ending. It's a pretty good game. I liked the free-form fighting system. As for the bad, well, it involved a lot of trial and error (eventually resulting in death) solving some of the environment puzzles, that is, finding out where to go, pulling levers and switches and such like.
Work has been pretty engaging. Still got a number of projects that need to be completed as soon as possible. Learning new stuff as we move along.
I recently discovered CakePHP, a PHP framework inspired by Ruby on Rails (I've heard so many good things about RoR that it makes me wonder). So far, it looks very sweet. Essentially, you write less code with the framework, and it's neat, too.
Going back to gaming, I'm expecting my copy of Fahrenheit which I ordered last week Monday. Another game that I've heard good things enough. Hope it arrives soon enough. Cheers.
It's been a while and there hasn't been much to write about, really. Plus I've been busy with work as well, running around, and generally not having enough time for myself.
I decided to launch Rigid Games a couple of weeks ago after I discovered a very magnificent forum software called Vanilla. It's very well done and it's developed with PHP/MySQL. Totally different from the other offerings out there, and it's free. I'm very much impressed with it. You can read my first post on the Rigid Games forum to find out what the big idea is.
April's coming to an end. Some exciting things (which I am not at liberty to post, at least, not for now) have happened. There's been bad days though. I've got a number of projects to work on, and there's another at work which was supposed to be completed by the end of this month, but unfortunately, the deadline has got to be shifted forward. Hope I can make it though, as it's been quite tight.
Alright, incoherent sentences aside, I am getting old. I saw Final Destination 3 and 16 Blocks yesterday. I'm still sticking with the original Final Destination as being the best in the trilogy. Meanwhile, 16 Blocks is actually very good. Good story. Good acting. It makes me wonder though, what sort of distance does a "block" cover in the US? I'm totally oblivious about this. The journey seemed quite longer than I would have expected. In any case, go see it.
Seeing as I'm on a tight budget, I had to settle for a Motorola V220. It's rather nice, considering the price. Came across some reviews talking about how poor the display and the camera are, but I don't see anything really wrong here, but that may be due to the fact that I don't need the camera. And the display is just fine (about 6 lines of text, which I find adequate; plus the colours are just fine. I see them perfectly). It's just a phone afterall.
We have a census coming up next week, between March 21 and 25, according to the information that I've been able to gather, which means I'm going to have to stay at home. Somehow, I find this, disturbing. Staying at home for 5 whole days? Man. I'll be working from home, which, well, isn't too encouraging, since there are a lot of power supply problems in my area. Granted, I'll survive.
You've got to love Mondays. I was on my way to work this morning, trying to get a bus when this happened. It was picked from my pocket as I was trying to get into the bus. Didn't notice until about 30 seconds later. It's about time though. I really need to get a new handset, since I've been using the former for about 2 years now. In any case, I've got a temporary line until I can recover the former.
Macromedia Flex, some relatively new technology framework for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs); that's what we just picked up at work and I've been reading through the documentation. It's pretty good, and the syntax is very easy to use and understand if you're coming from an HTML background, since it's wholly based on XML anyway. I only have a few quirks with ActionScript and the event model. But I guess I'll eventually be able to workaround them.
