ioyu

comfort zone

2008-04-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

My computer room is a perpetual mess these days. It feels like everything I do to organize that room results in adding one more box full of stuff to the dwindling available floorspace. Well, as of last night... that is actually still the case, but...

I did take time to set up the Atari 2600 once again. Good times... It's connected to Karen's old "pre-Lee" 13-inch TV through a VCR (in case I need to submit a score to Twin Galaxies, ya' know!). All the cabling, including the Supercharger audio cable that I use for Atari development, is nicely tucked out of view. It's a good setup, quite conducive to casual 8-bit, bleepy mayhem.

There was ample testing involved, naturally. I kicked some butt (virtual butt, as I was playing alone) on Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, and my game, Reflex. I also got pretty far on Thomas Jentzsch's incredible homebrew title Thrust+. I feel an Atari homebrew renaissance coming on...

it's flickr time

2008-03-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

Just uploaded a ton of photos. This is a momentous occasion... it's been over a year since I uploaded anything to flickr! Go take a look.

where am i from?

2008-03-20T23:08:00.000-07:00

I guess this is one of those "a little about me" posts. I was doing some nostalgia surfing this evening and felt compelled to blather a little about where I'm from. Most people who know me know that I was born in Okinawa, am half-Korean, and was raised as a Navy brat which meant we moved around a lot. In fact, that's sort of my "line" whenever people ask where I'm from. It's quick and easy, and it usually suits the conversation... enough information, but not too much (because people expect short answers to such questions). But since this is my site and my train of thought, I'd like to elaborate:

I was born in 1972 on the island of Okinawa, a prefecture of Japan and the largest in a chain of islands called the Ryukyu islands which lie south of Japan's four main islands. A lot of people think of Karate Kid 2 or Okinawan martial arts when I tell them I was born there, and that's fine. We left Okinawa when I was still an infant, which makes you wonder why I'm droning on about a place I don't remember. Well, we eventually returned in 1980.

Between 1980 and 1983 I attended grades 2 through 5 on Kadena Air Base. We lived on the economy (off base) at first, in a small house nestled against a forested area that my friends and I referred to as "the boonies". We'd often find ourselves building forts out of reeds and giant "elephant ear" leaves whose sap always made me itch (but how else were we going to build the roof?!). The best places to build forts, eerily enough, were near old stone tombs that looked like small houses. Naturally, there was this one tomb that was always open. The small, but heavy stone door was cracked maybe 6 or 7 inches—just enough to give you a good case of the heebies. We would always dare each other to get a good look inside—not go in, mind you—just peer inside to see whatever there was to see, but since the door and the opening were so small, very little light ever got in and so it was always pitch black... and very, very scary.

The route to my school bus stop was pretty cool. It involved following dirt paths along the edge of the forest and making my way through a sugarcane field, usually swiping a small chunk of cane to gnaw on (my teeth hurt thinking about it). The bus stop was located near a small stationery and candy store where I would squander any Yen in my pocket on Felix gum or other local goodies. If I had a fair amount of Yen (around 200), I'd buy this one box that contained several different kinds of candy, stickers, pencil, erasers and a toy. That was the mother lode... when I was 8.

When we eventually got into base housing, the walk to school was not nearly as adventurous, but there were a lot more American kids to play with that lived near us. The two real friends that I had made off base had also moved at the same time or thereabouts. One moved on base, but a bit too far for me to visit often, and the other moved back to the States, which was devastating... I even missed getting to say goodbye to him. Such is the life of a brat.

More later.

geek thread

2008-03-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

Since some people have gotten tired of staring at my last post, and also since it's some whacky hour in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping, but ain't, I decided to share some work-related geekery.

This is probably stupid and you probably already know about this, but... You know that one bit of coding advice that's been going around about how you should initialize a local variable to the length of an array and use that in your "for" loop condition instead of accessing the length property on the array every iteration? Yeah. That one. Well, a couple colleagues and I were curious if this practice applied to all languages. Long story short, it seems that generally speaking, modern compilers (e.g., C#, VB, Java) should make such optimizations for you and to do so in those languages may be superfluous and only serve to make the code harder to read. However, such manual tweaking is still a good practice if you're developing Javascript for web pages (being that there is currently no smart JIT optimization going on under the hood of your typical browser today).

A compact, clean method of doing this involves initializing the length variable along with the iterator in the for loop construct:

for (var i = 0, len = myArray.length; i < len; i++) {}

Not only is this compact, but it also scopes the variable "len" to the loop itself, meaning it's eligible for garbage collection immediately after the loop is done iterating.

As for compiled languages (and even non-compiled languages), there are still options for speeding up array access in a "for" loop. One that I thought was interesting, but really makes app logic tough to follow, is initializing the iterator with the length of the array minus one, then counting backwards.

for (var i = myArr.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {}

That really just buys you some extra cycles during the initialization of the loop, but not throughout subsequent iterations, and as I said, it's hard to immediately determine the purpose of that loop. One situation where you might get a noticeable increase in performance using that construct is when iterating through a large jagged multi-dimensional array. Like anyone ever does that.

Anyway, that's what you get for complaining about stale posts on my blog.

fried rice

2008-02-11T20:15:00.001-08:00

A recent post on V's blog reminded me of a time some co-frogs and I went to Mekong River downtown for lunch. One of us ordered the C8 (combo fried rice) and another ordered the C9 (chicken fried rice). The other orders are irrelevant to this story, but I ordered the B6. I always order the B6 because it is savory and delicious. Anyway...

After a short while, the server appeared next to our table with the first plate of food in hand and declared, "Fried rice," expecting someone to stake his claim.

Immediately, I attempted to disambiguate the situation by asking one simple question, "Is that a C8 or a C9?"

The server looked at me for a good long while, unblinking, like I'd just asked her to do long division without the aid of a calculator, and I'd swear she began to gradually go cross-eyed before responding slowly and deliberately:

"Fried rice."

Instantly, I was reminded of the "two weeks" scene from Total Recall and the Leon interview from Blade Runner. I will try using less-threatening interrogation techniques in the future.

an open letter to...

2008-02-02T05:34:00.001-08:00

...this guy.

Hey man, let's get Reflex published already. The latest revision is bug-free and ready to go (the version I posted on AtariAge so long ago is old and slightly buggy). I think the documentation is 90% written... maybe missing some acknowledgments, but I can tie that all up fairly quickly. The manual needs to be designed though. The last time we talked about it, I think we liked the idea of simply reusing the label art you had done. Do you still have the artwork files? I was thinking I could start an Illustrator document, drop in and lay out the content, then hand it off to you for artwork and polish. I know very little about print, so...

Anyway, what's spurring this on is continued interest in the game. Earlier this week, I was contacted by a hobbyist who builds carts and sells them on ebay, and offering royalties for doing so. I figure, the game is languishing, there's no reason not to publish it. All the hard work is done. So let's just do it! :)

GO TEAM!

meebo makes computer geek's day

2008-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

I just noticed for the first time that my favorite chat client, Meebo, has support for a language called "Code Monkey" (located after Chinese and before Creole at the bottom of the page). Who says localization can't be fun?

Blogger.submitBloggerPosting(this.newPost);

PS: There's also a language option for the dyslexic crowd.

my logan runneth over

2007-10-28T22:26:00.001-07:00

I was pleasantly surprised by my (rather neglected) Netflix queue when Logan's Run (1976) arrived a few days ago. I would guess I was about nine (c.1981) when I last saw this movie and I could barely recall any of it when I added it to my queue, other than the fact that it was science-fictiony and involved some guy named Logan... who was running... probably away from something... or something along those lines. And it was probably going to be a good nostalgia trip.

So I popped the DVD in and... Wow. Right off the bat, the special effects were terribly dated. The acting was so-bad-it's-good, even hilarious at times. And the plot line was thin and confusing. It had so much in common with my favorite movie, Tron (1982), that I couldn't help but love it. Plus, it had something Tron utterly lacked. T&A—Jessica (Jenny Agutter) is not at all hard on the eyes.

Okay, so I write terrible reviews, but how about that title, eh?

quote of the day

2007-10-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

It does feel like friday. Do you want me to plug in the cow?
-Co-worker responding to my comment that it felt like a Friday

time flies when you're having fun

2007-10-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

Short and sweet—I celebrated my one year anniversary at frog this week. :)

status update

2007-09-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive — though you wouldn't know it to visit my site (brushes away cobwebs and breaks off a chunk of rotted wooden support beam). I've been extremely busy with home and work. My sister and niece came down from Des Moines for a wonderful week-and-a-half visit and returned home just yesterday. I managed to swing three days off during the visit despite being steeped in a relatively demanding project (particularly demanding for me as it's my first foray into WPF production work — thankfully, I've gotten lots of encouragement and some good old-fashioned hand-holding from the lead dev, whose name is also Lee.)

I also survived the densest part of the year when it comes to gift-buying (which I dread because I suck at it), second only to Christmas. Karen and Macy have birthdays not a week apart, followed by our wedding anniversary — our eleventh to be precise. A good friend of ours, Jen, was gracious enough to watch the kids so we could actually celebrate it this year. Last year, our ten year "aluminum" anniversary was celebrated with some quick "Happy Anniversaries" amidst trying to sell our home and move to Austin due to the new job. This year, we at least got to dress up and hit Ruth's Chris downtown for fabulous steaks then catch a movie: Balls of Fury (my choice... and I've already apologized... numerous times).

Thanks, Joe, for spurring me to post something. It was long overdue! Love your blog, btw. :)

a mother's day wish

2007-05-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

"Mommy, if you were a dragon and you had blood coming out of your mouth, I would give you medicine."
—Macy (4 years old) to Karen

Awesome.

karen rocks... too much

2007-04-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

I would just like to publicly thank my wife, Karen, for being the brains and brawn behind everything important that goes on in our household. Fastenau Corp would grind to a halt and close its doors forever if not for the operational excellence and strategic vision she provides. Her deft juggling skills boggle the mind. She tackles any task, from the mundane to the downright life-critical, with grace and poise.

Without her, we wouldn't be moving into a beautiful new home at the beginning of May, our finances would be a disaster, the apartment would appear permanently ransacked, we wouldn't have had the wonderful basil pesto shrimp and bowtie pasta we had tonight or any of the other wonderful meals she cooks for us, we wouldn't survive a day...

However, I would be the number one player in Wii Play Billiards.

next generation ui

2007-03-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

I submit for your approval the following ATM user interface concept:

Screen 1

Swipe your card to begin.

Screen 2

Enter your PIN:
> ****

Screen 3

Select a language:
English
Spanish
Zork
> 3

Screen 4

You are using an ATM. On the screen is a prompt: "Swipe your card to begin." There is a suspicious man standing behind you.
> swipe card

Screen 5

You swipe your card and are prompted to enter your PIN, which you do. At the language prompt, you select English. You then choose to withdraw cash from your checking account. The ATM is currently displaying the following prompt: "Enter the amount you would like to withdraw." You can't help but notice the suspicious man behind you reaching into his pocket.
> enter 100

Screen 6

The ATM grinds and churns for a few moments, mechanically counting out five twenty-dollar bills. You see the bills quickly emerge about half way out of the cash slot. Before you can take your money, however, the suspicious man dives for your cash, knocking you out of the way. As you confront him, he pulls out a gun and kills you.
You are dead.
You scored 0 out of a possible 192 points. This gives you a ranking of "total n00b."
Restart, Restore, or Quit? >

spore love and purple sharpies

2007-03-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

Will Wright, the father of all things Sim, gave an educational keynote on storytelling in games, and (naturally) demo'd his highly anticipated new game, Spore... which is, of course, the last game we'll ever need to play. I just hope it comes bundled with an upgraded CPU, RAM, and video card.

But enough about that... After his wonderful presentation, I jumped over a few people to make my way towards the stage with my original copy of SimCity (Amiga version) and a purple Sharpie (loaned to me by Ashley) and managed to 1) Shake hands with Will Wright himself, and 2) Get his autograph on one of the SimCity disks.

I was sure he was going to get swarmed after the keynote and fully expected to have to push, squeeze, and bite my way to where he was sitting, which is why I bee-lined it to the front, but all was relatively calm around him (except me, apparently). I stood in front of him, disk and Sharpie in hand, waiting for eye contact. Meanwhile, other attendees verbalized their delight in seeing an original copy of SimCity. Then Will looked at me, I said I was a big fan and asked him to autograph my disk, he looked at the disk, and said "Hey! That's the half-bright version!" just before autographing it.

Wow! I totally forgot about that. The Amiga version of SimCity came with both a 512KB and 1MB version for those with the extra memory. I was handing him the 1MB version, which took advantage of a special graphics mode called "extra half-bright" mode to achieve more colors. It made me wonder if he'd actually worked on coding the Amiga port himself. How cool. :)

8-bit handshaking

2007-03-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

I just shook Paul Slocum's hand, and literally just overheard people talking about how they partied hard at frog's sxswi kick-off event last night. So, pretty good morning so far despite the nanosecond of sleep I got last night.

* Check out the site for Paul's band, Treewave.

busy, like everyone else

2007-03-07T01:59:00.000-08:00

SXSW is both literally and figuratively right around the corner. I'll be wrapping up a bunch of frog work amidst the chaos of the Interactive conference and am gearing up for some Vista Sidebar Gadget development, which I'm excited about. I haven't figured out all the panels I'll be attending at the conference yet, but my dance ticket will be pretty full throughout the event.

I'll also be helping with the Interactive kick-off party that frog is once again hosting this year by setting up, supervising, and breaking down a larger, more robust version of Jared's infamous Ruben's tube. Jared constructed this latest tube for a Halloween party last year, however he won't be able to make the kick-off party, so he recruited me to run it — I guess he sensed that I have latent pyro tendencies. (I am a Fourth of July baby after all.) Anyway, stop and say hi if you see me there. I'll be the guy engulfed in flames.

See ya' at SXSW!

burning kitchen

2007-01-30T05:33:00.000-08:00

It seems like only yesterday that World of Burgertime was a mere glimmer in my eye. It's been such a whirlwind that I apparently forgot to announce the release of "The Burning Kitchen" expansion. So, for the dozen or so people who don't play WoBT, here's a screenshot of what you're missing:

trigonometric plasma field generator

2007-01-25T23:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's really just another Javascript toy that I built. Take a look.

world of burgertime

2007-01-24T12:45:00.000-08:00

I had this idea for a classic videogame-themed MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game, for those of you that are Karen) called World of Burgertime. Naturally, it takes the best of the current hot trends in MMORPGs and mashes them together with nostalgic 8-bit bliss like so much boiled potatoes. What you get is a retro, colorful world that hearkens back to the hey-day of quarter-activated amusements... The early 80's.

A typical conversation between players might go something like this:

LettisSuks9: "What's your WoBT character?"
FallingPatty: "Level 39 egg. You?"
LettisSuks9: "I'm a level 60 pickle slice. Almost have a complete set of epic condiments."
FallingPatty: "Cool. What pieces you missing?"
LettisSuks9: "Just Mayo. We're fighting Chef tonight, so hopefully he'll drop it. Last time, we wiped right at the very end... his pepper AOE spell's a bitch. Stunned our main hotdogs, then took out the rest of us with sliced tomatoes and sesame seed buns."

flickr bandwagon

2007-01-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

Couldn't help myself. I really didn't find the little Flash Flickr widget everyone uses very attractive... so here's alpha build 1 of mine.

in recognition of "big chill 2007"

2007-01-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

I hereby turn my site blue again. But a lighter, cooler shade this time. With easter egg dye... to commemorate the half-inch-thick layer of ice that encased my Honda Civic the past couple of days.

elite: pretty much the best game ever

2007-01-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

The classic game Elite has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance in my home lately. I’ve been giving the PS3 a break since (quickly) beating (the average) first person shooter, Resistance: Fall of Man, to enjoy some good retro-gaming (plus, I’m not about to fork over sixty bucks on another game that’s just ‘meh’… get on the stick with those true next gen titles, Sony).

Anyway, I’m fortunate enough to have a full copy of Elite for the 8-bit Apple //c — box, docs, and all. Having only superficially explored this game as a teenager, I never really appreciated the size of its virtual universe or the depth of its gameplay. It is truly Grand Theft Auto: Space in shear size and open-endedness.

Elite spans 8 galaxies, has 250 planets per galaxy (that’s 2000 planets!), and fits on one side of a 5.25-inch disk. That just blows my mind. Plus, the gameplay is astonishingly well-balanced. I’ve found myself consistently challenged and have graduated from one goal or strategy to the next in a very organic way.

At any point in the game, I may pursue the path of a trader, smuggler, bounty hunter, or pirate, or some combination thereof, and must deal with the challenges that each path presents. While these aren’t new roles in the space-faring genre, Elite implements them with incredible fluidity, particularly for an 8-bit game. You’ll find yourself shifting gears based on a number of factors like ship capability, storage capacity, money, and desire to achieve the ultimate space pilot status of ‘elite,’ naturally.

So, basically, this old game still holds its own and I highly recommend you dust off an old copy and give it another go for old time’s sake… back when games made up for hardware limitations by actually being fun and unique.

blogger moved my cheese

2007-01-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

If you happen to subscribe to my feed and are wondering why the hell it's not updating in your reader/aggregator/mail software, please update the URL you're using for my atom feed to this. I've updated the link in the sidebar as well.

Sorry for the inconvenience. You missed out on two whole posts, including this meta post.

austin lockdown

2007-01-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

Well, if the mysterious (possible gas leak) death of 63 birds downtown doesn't get me blogging, I don't know what will.

The drive to work this morning was rather uneventful, that is, until I encountered the barricade while heading east on 5th Street at Colorado, one block away from Congress Avenue, where I work. Whacky bicycle parade? Gay pride march? So I cut way over and took a right down Colorado all the way to Cesar Chavez where I hung a left. I crossed Congress Avenue, catching only a glimpse of the quiet, blockaded road leading up to the capitol building. By then, I had turned on the radio and was searching in vain for any news on what was happening.

I continued east on Cesar Chavez and took a left at Trinity and made my way north to my regular surface lot at 7th. I didn't encounter any heavy traffic and I still hadn't heard anything on the radio, so I figured it must be a parade, but I called home anyway.

"There's something going on downtown. They've shut down Congress. Have you heard anything?"

"Really? No."

"Yeah. It must be a parade or something. You might want to check the TV to see what's up."

"Okay."

"I'm walking towards work and I'll let you know what I find out. I'll come home if it's anything life-threatening."

"Haha. Okay."

I huffed it west on 8th Street as I normally do, but this time I was greeted by another barricade at Brazos. There was a motorcycle cop keeping an eye on a police line. This was the first time I realized that all pedestrian as well as vehicle access to Congress had been restricted.

I called one of my colleagues, Bryan, who told me of the dead birds and of speculation that there might be a gas leak. He said that e-mails were circulating about company employees working from home. I said thanks, turned around, and headed back to the car.

That's when I noticed the zombies...