Rom's Rants

Teeth

2008-07-16T18:24:00.002-05:00

I've been working from home today while getting used to a painkiller I'm going to have to take for the next three weeks.

I have an impacted wisdom tooth that became infected, so I'm taking antibiotics to get rid of the infection before my surgery on August 7.

I'm not exactly happy or pain-free, but at least it will all be taken care of shortly.

Fail: Research in Motion

2008-07-09T11:29:00.001-05:00

The .jobs TLD has been approved, and Research in Motion was one of the first companies to actually sign up.

Guess what their employment URL is now?

http://rim.jobs

Really. Try it.

The Jefferson Bible

2008-07-06T10:25:00.003-05:00

There is an interesting article over at the L.A. Times about some activities by one of the more secular-minded founding fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson.

I knew that most of the Founding Fathers were deists, but I didn't know that Thomas Jefferson took scissors to a bible and using paste and a journal made a 46-page rendition of the bible as he believed it. (Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.)

If you want to read what he felt was important from the bible, check it out. The Jefferson Bible is available online. (Make sure you have a decent pop-up blocker.)

Happy Birthday, ToNS!

2008-07-01T08:51:00.003-05:00

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the Theory of Natural Selection was first announced to the public.

Since then, the theory has been refined, reinforced through genetic evidence, and has become the keystone to modern science.

We owe a great debt to those who could make the mental leap from the intuitive answer to the logical, graceful answer that we have today.

Guest Post #4 is Up

2008-06-28T14:55:00.000-05:00

My fourth guest post for Game QA Blog is up.

Sorry, Louisiana

2008-06-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry, Louisiana, but your government has failed you.

Freshwater Defense

2008-06-22T21:10:00.003-05:00

For those of you who have been following the pending dismissal of a teacher from the Mount Vernon School District in Ohio, the defense has been revealed...he was just "teaching the controversy."

Evidently, burning crosses into the arms of your students is one way of doing that.

This whole thing reminds me of a quote from Martin Luther:

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Given that mindset, is it any wonder that science is under attack from religious zealots?

SlimDX

2008-06-22T12:57:00.003-05:00

For those of you who want to do managed code games but do not want to use XNA for whatever reason, the 1.0 release of SlimDX has been released.

The feature list for this release is fairly impressive: DX9 and DX10, XAudio 2, and more.

Check out the documentation. It's not as strong as the Microsoft documentation is for some of their API's, but it is similar to the level of documentation that was available for Managed DirectX.

Last Call for Science

2008-06-18T17:29:00.001-05:00

If you care about science education at all in the United States, it is time to make your voice heard. Call Louisiana Governor Bobby "The Exorcist" Jindal and tell him to veto SB 733.

Why Care About Creationism?

2008-06-13T17:38:00.002-05:00

Go watch this video. Go on. This post will still be here when you get back.

In the past, religion managed to convince people that the only truth was contained within its holy texts and anything outside of that text was heresy. As a result, science, technology and society went into a thousand-year tail spin.

We see the same threat today with the fundamentalist evangelicals and their push to supplant science with their religious tenets. Dangerous evangelicals like "Dr." Kent Hovind and Ken Ham push blatant falsehoods tinged with religious fairy dust to poison the minds of students so that they can reap the power that comes from being an "authority," while places like the Discovery Institute poison the minds of school boards and governments in an effort to reduce the effectiveness of our science teachers.

We should not allow the world to slip into a second Dark Ages. One only has to look at modern day Islamic culture to see what happens when religion stifles science.

Creationism in Europe

2008-06-11T20:17:00.002-05:00

I wish I could say that the creationist uprising was a uniquely American situation, but I can't.

Look at this partial list of the shit happening in Europe.

Creationism in Louisiana

2008-06-11T19:08:00.002-05:00

I have to give the creationists some credit. After their defeat in Dover, they have come up with a very interesting backdoor that even managed to get unanimous approval from the Louisiana State Senate.

They are no longer claiming that Intelligent Design is science. They're claiming that keeping their non-scientific viewpoint out of schools is "viewpoint discrimination."

Here's the catch, though...science, by default, discriminates against all viewpoints equally. Asserting a viewpoint without evidence and without experimentation automatically disqualifies your statements as not being science. Once you have some research to back up your viewpoint that can be torn apart by others via peer review, then you are getting somewhere, but the Intelligent Design crew don't even have that.

In the Dover trial, one of the Intelligent Design proponents said that they had an experiment that anyone could run that would lend credence to their hypothesis. (It is a hypothesis, not a theory.) They were asked if they had run their own experiment, and the answer was no. Meanwhile, we have laboratory proof for evidence popping up all over the place.

So what should we be teaching our children? If we're going to teach controversies, let's start with denying the Holocaust since four times as many historians deny that the Holocaust happened than biologists deny evolution, even though it was well documented by the perpetrators of it themselves. Then instead of geology, let's teach the Young Earth Theory, stating that the earth was created in approximately 4,000 BCE, even though we have historical evidence going back far beyond 10,000 BCE. Instead of chemistry and atomic theory, we can teach about the classical elements instead because they are believed by the Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans and others. Instead of psychology, we can teach Scientology instead.

It is sad to see evolution getting attacked because it is the science that ties almost all other modern scientific disciplines together. Because of evolutionary theory, advances in genetics can be applied to immunology, molecular biology, anatomy and more.

When advances in Intelligent Design/Creation Science/whatever name it will have next week apply to anything other than ignorance of the scientific method, let us know. In the meantime, if you are in Louisiana and want to help fight this bill in the 11th hour, here is all the information you need, including a wonderful analysis of the bill itself.

Code...Exciting and New

2008-06-11T11:18:00.002-05:00

We're currently going through a RFP process for a replacement integrated system at work.

I've briefly spoken about our current system in the past. Our current integrated system isn't exactly the best piece of software on the face of the planet. I've spent most of the last year and a half cleaning the code up and trying to stabilize the base.

Our existing system does a lot of things like rely too much on session state, pass around ArrayLists of information instead of strongly-typed structures or objects, little to no code reuse, nineteen different ways of doing the same thing (often on the same page) and so forth. It's the code equivalent of Frankenstein's Monster.

I've managed to get the code to the point where it is manageable, but there are still times when I have to wade into sections of code that leave me feeling wounded afterwards. I may not care if code is beautiful, but when code is ugly, it hurts.

As we near our final choice for our new system, I find myself feeling a sense of relief and excitement. Relief in knowing that my days of wading through illegible code and being traumatized by side effects are relatively numbered, and excitement in knowing that we will be starting from essentially a blank slate. It will be a fun architectural challenge to build a properly extensible scaffold on top of the new system and integrate our business rules and user requirements into the new system.

Admittedly, we're looking at a 9-15 month implementation window, but the final destination is in sight: a codebase that won't leave me feeling unclean after working in it.

Anti-Game Talking Point

2008-06-08T02:48:00.001-05:00

Watch out, fellow gamers...the next incident that will be spun with an anti-gamer spin has occurred in Tokyo.

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- A man ran over a group of people with his truck and then stabbed 17, killing at least 3, in a video game district of downtown Tokyo Sunday afternoon, according to a Tokyo fire official.

Rescue workers from the Tokyo Fire Department gather to help the injured in Tokyo's Akihabara district.

Three men -- ages 19, 47 and 74 -- were killed, according to a Tokyo metropolitan police officer.

Two others were critically wounded, police said.

Japanese media reported that the suspect told investigators he was 25 years old.

Guest Post #3 Is Up

2008-06-04T11:27:00.003-05:00

Do you know any poison testers? If so, how should management deal with them?

I actually felt a bit weird writing this one because a big reason why I feel I failed at Ritual was because I didn't follow a couple of pieces of my own advice. Hindsight may be 20/20, but a pain in the ass is forever. ;)

Jindal for VP? I Hope Not

2008-06-02T18:23:00.002-05:00

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate on the McCain ticket. I'm hoping that this isn't the case.

It isn't because I don't like his economic policies or the balance he would bring to the ticket. It's because his government in Louisiana has been violently anti-science after running on a highly religious platform. For example, the Louisiana Science Education Act essentially says that while the state has to teach the text they are provided, if a local neighborhood disagrees with the lessons, the State Board of Education has to help the local school board create a curriculum that tears apart the current theories.

It essentially equates free speech and scientific research, and the two are not equal. I can say that I believe that life was created when the Flying Spaghetti Monster touched the world with His noodly appendage or that I believe that a God of some sort created all of creation in a single workweek with only eight hours overtime or that the world was created by a giant sneeze from the Great Green Arkleseizure, but that isn't science. That's dogma. I'm all for teaching comparitive religion classes in schools because we do live in a world where some knowledge of world religion is not only valuable in order to understand literature and history, but also necessary because ignorance of religious practices in other countries can lead to you being viciously killed or thrown in jail for prolonged periods of time.

We've already had eight years of a president who has thumbed his nose at the scientific community and who has injected a religious viewpoint into policy. As a result, we have abstinence-only education which isn't properly serving the needs of children, a government that with one hand has doubled the budget of the National Institutes of Health and made a nominal increase for the budget for the National Science Foundation has at the same time distorted or suppressed scientific findings that don't support their policies, an administration that rejected calls by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen regulations related to lead poisoning and replaced scientific panelists with members with ties to the lead industry, and more.

I'm an economic conservative, but when it comes to social issues I find myself quite liberal, and if it looks like science is going to be given the shaft for another eight years and further erase America's edge in scientific progress, then I'll have no choice but to side with the Democratic party on this election.

A-Kon Day 2

2008-06-01T08:56:00.002-05:00

I've uploaded all of the images as a 44MB ZIP file.

It includes some pictures of the Guinness World Record attempt.

In this linked shot over at Flickr, I'm in the middle left facing the camera and my wife is the one with the Sims jewel in the background. I went as "Pong" to do my part. My props are on the ground.

I wasn't planning on doing any sort of cosplay at the convention because it just isn't my thing, but the props were easy to make and it helped solidify the record attempt, so it was worth it.

A-Kon Day 2 Delayed

2008-05-31T21:28:00.003-05:00

I'm still going through the pictures I took today trying to get rid of the crap, plus I have about an hours worth of work I have to do tonight.

Here's a preview picture to hold you off.

A-Kon Night 1

2008-05-30T23:10:00.003-05:00

Wasn't able to get into Anime Hell due to capacity concerns, but I did get three more pictures, including the only Tenchi cosplayer I've seen this con.

A-Kon Day 1

2008-05-30T16:47:00.002-05:00

Better look out, Strawberry Shortcake, or American Greetings will sue your ass.

Plenty of pirates this year. I consider this a representative sample.

The pre-registration line never got shorter than having about 1,000 in line at once. There were 2,500 in line at the peak last night.

Video game characters are the order of business this year due to an attempt at a Guinness Book World Record tomorrow.

Webcomic authors were out in force. The Applegeeks guys forgot to bring change...

And even though most of the visitors of Shacknews really don't seem to like VGCats, the creator is taking it in stride...

This picture was taken just moments before Shinichi Watanabe's Japanese afro kicked my ass.

A few other costumes...

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" Mini-Review

2008-05-27T07:13:00.002-05:00

I managed to get out and see "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" yesterday, and while I thought it was better than "Temple of Doom," it wasn't better by much.

To be fair, it isn't the fault of the actors. All of the primary stars gave stellar performances. Even Cate Blanchett, who is reduced to playing Generic Russian Bitch #12 due to the storyline, is able to pull off a decent performance. The special effects were decent, there are some nice miniature sections, and the script stayed true to the characters.

The main problem is the myth they decided to tackle. Movies like this work when the back story is well established and generally integrated into our communal consciousness. "Raiders" and "Last Crusade" work because they ask us to imagine for a moment that the legends behind Judaism and Christianity respectively are literally true. While the legends that "Crystal Skull" ask us about are less than sixty years old for the most part, they're still enough out there that we can start to see it. "Mola Ram" was just pulled out of Lucas' ass.

It's still worth seeing just for some real closure to the series, but as long as you go in expecting a big screen version of a TV episode of the Indiana Jones chronicles, you won't be disappointed.

Guest Post #2

2008-05-27T00:16:00.003-05:00

My second guest post, "Lessons from Car Salesmen," is now live at Game QA Blog.

I need to ask Zach if he really has a trademark application out for Game QA Blog...

(Update: Copy/pasted incorrect URL initially.)

Errors of the Past

2008-05-24T20:52:00.002-05:00

One exercise I've been going through over the last few weeks while I try to get myself back into a QA mindset is I've been going over my actions back when I was QA Manager at Ritual (20/20 hindsight and all that) and trying to figure out what I screwed up. I know I've made plenty of mistakes, but you have to be able to identify errors that you've made if you want to advance.

My biggest issue is how I've dealt with the public. I violated the number one rule of public relations: Never draw attention to yourself unless you are selling something.

For example, while I was not in error as far as bringing out additional data regarding technical support ratios, I was in error with how I dealt with the community after the fact because I wasn't really selling anything. While I could have used that time to promote the products I had worked on, I ended up just talking about piracy more than anything else, and this gave those who were promoting piracy their entry.

I made the same mistake going on about Sony. Not only did I have nothing to "sell," my actions actually damaged my personal marketability. While testers loved it because it brought attention to issues that they faced every single day, it did nothing but damage my ability to continue in the games industry.

When I am testing, I like to think of what I do as science. I observe an error, I create a hypothesis about what could cause that error, I experiment to prove or disprove the hypothesis and repeat that process until I come up with a consistently reproducible case for the error, analyze and report on the error, and then retest later on.

Unfortunately, I suffer from the same failing as many scientists. I see the purity of what I do and because I am so close to it, I can't see how what I am doing can be misconstrued or seen for anything other than what it is. Being "liked" doesn't even enter into the picture.

Look at the "debate" between scientists and creationists. The scientists have the evidence, they have theories that have been able to reliably predict results (the true mark of a good theory), they have how evolution not only applies to the diversity of life but also to other fields of study, but for the most part, they do not have public speaking skills. They come across as elitists preaching from their ivory towers. Even though they speak the truth, they don't come across as "likable," and so they lose the debate. The quality of the evidence and the quality of the argument mean less to the majority of American public than the quality of the presenter. Fortunately, the terms of the debate are changing...

But alas, I'm off on a tangent. (Another failing.) My point is that it was a really good thing for me to essentially vanish for the last year. It's given me time to rebuild my image both in and out of the games industry, get ready to return to college later this year, and all-in-all work on improving myself and the world of those around me.

Now that said, my posts here for the foreseeable future are going to fall into one of four categories.

One, useful pieces of information or code that could help someone who encounters a problem similar or identical to what I have recently encountered. According to my web stats, these are the most popular entries and pay for ~75% of my ad traffic.

Two, funny videos or pictures that my readers might enjoy. There won't be many of these. Usually, I share these over at ShackNews.

Three, updates on life or family. (My granddaughter who was hit by a truck is home now and recovering nicely. Thank you for the well-wishing.)

Finally, and this is going to seem a bit vague but it is with good reason, I'm going to try to focus less on the what and the how of things but focus a bit more on the why. While it is admirable to see what is happening and even more so to understand how it happens, knowing the why is what gives you power.

Guest Post #1 Up

2008-05-18T21:43:00.002-05:00

My first guest post is up over at Game QA Blog.

Check out "Soft Language" here.

Also, some of you may start seeing ads for VistaGameDoctor.com over the next week or two. VGD has been making just enough off of advertising to pay for its hosting and domain name, and I'm investing a little bit to try to increase its exposure.

When Should You License A Component?

2008-05-17T11:07:00.002-05:00

In the past, we've all had to reinvent the wheel because we couldn't afford a component or library that we have needed to get our work done. However, even when you can afford it, it may not be the proper choice. So how do you decide when you should license a component?

The simple formula is license if it is cheaper than what it would cost for you to make it times five, but here is the breakdown of how to arrive at that formula.

First, take the cost of what it would cost to create the component from scratch. This is really your gross hourly wage, working at most 30 hours a week. (Expect 10 hours a week for breaks, false starts, meetings, etc.) Double that includes your time debugging and integrating your component, and triple that includes your time having to support your own code.

At this point, we are at three times what it directly costs you to implement the feature. Now double that. This represents your lost opportunity cost: time you spend working on this feature/component/library is time you aren't working on other things.

That brings us to six times the cost of what it would take you to implement it yourself. Why is the formula only five times? Subtract the original implementation cost to account for how long it will take you to actually implement the licensed component in your system. No matter how easy the licensor may claim it will be, there will always be a gotcha that will force you to take time debugging how the component works, contacting their support department, etc. It usually approximates your implementation timeline.

Mind you, this does not mean that open source/free software is automatically the best thing. If you aren't getting support, you have to factor in the time you will spend looking for the answers into the formula. In addition, many open source components and libraries have licenses that are incompatible with the needs of many businesses.

So to sum up, if it costs less than five times what it would cost you to make it, license it.