Brandon's Blog

2/4/2010 #

Let It Snow

It’s funny when you read to the bottom of a story thinking something and there’s a comment at the bottom saying the same thing. Why is the EPA talking about pump prices when passing regulations?

This has been a rough two weeks around the office, with reductions in the overall local Finance/IT force of over 50%. My area is not really impacted too much, but everyone pretty much already officially knows if their job is going away or not. I’m still not sure how I would handle it myself, with a big systems migration coming up later in the year. It’s kind of a train-the-replacement-computer situation, so I have trouble seeing a better way to do it than to just communicate like they did.

On a happier note, I’m pleased to say my secret project has been deployed in live testing as of yesterday evening. It also appears to work (to the extent that features are complete). While I’m not reluctant to announce it before it reaches feature-complete, it’s at the level where stuff doesn’t work and I know it doesn’t work and it needs to work.

I wisely pushed it out into Apache/WSGI world earlier than I did for Efendi, since I had some last-minute problems getting happy with mod_wsgi during that project. And it seems like I am unwittingly writing more and more Python 2.6 and above code. Debian Lenny is still on Python 2.5.

In unrelated news, I got an MP3 file to play via a Windows DLL call from Python yesterday, which was just completely frightening. Like seeing your old professor on Fear Factor or something: it just seems like they’re far too smart to be doing something so dumb. But it might come in handy down the road. I’ve been wanting a client/server MP3 player that you can control over the console. That might sound ridiculous, but when you’re coding it might save a few window flips (which on a netbook pays fast dividends). Plus, it’s cool. Somehow.

And also: Win2VNC. I just realized riding in the taxi this morning that Win2VNC would allow you to have full, like-native mouse and keyboard access to a media center PC as long as you had a laptop with you in the room.

Unfortunately, the only computer available to us that can patch into this wacko PAL television is my netbook (Intel graphics, who woulda thunk). The MacBook just requires a few words of hoodoo upon plugin, and the Sony only works when you’ve had another computer plugged into the TV before and haven’t changed the Source since then.

How I figured that out and didn’t understand the drain mechanism on my bathtub for six months is beyond me. Of course, why a bathtub needs a drain mechanism is also beyond me. şöyle böyle. I’m still waiting on a few explanatory memos from Europe.

Anyway, the most logical “remote control” in the house is the most convenient to have running the show.

Stunningly, H.264 is taxing enough to decode I had to turn down the video quality in VLC (quite a bit of voodoo on its own) to keep it from skipping and rebuffering. Locally.

I guess that gets me mostly caught up to the present day’s events. This weekend’s project is to figure out what you’re actually supposed to wear on a safari if you aren’t Dr. Livingston.

1/20/2010 #

With So Much Deception, It's Hard Not to Wander Away

After three months of fighting, my ten months of claimable back utilities that I didn’t until October know I could claim might be accepted for reimbursement.

And, as a public service announcement, never challenge a motivated finance guy’s ability to reconcile an account. I reconciled my reconciliation, punk.

1/20/2010 #

Update

My boss’s mom came through the surgery great and is recovering in the hospital. She’s now one millionth Choctaw.

1/20/2010 #

Unbelievable

It astonishes me how IE 6 can know enough about transparent PNGs to color them fog-gray, but not know enough to make them transparent.

I think the hack is something like masking the image with a hovering frame or something. I don’t care. I’m done supporting its bad behavior. I can deal with the gray haze from work.

Fortunately, all my jQuery code works fine in IE 6.

The secret project continues… translucently.

1/18/2010 #

Blood Money Gives Back

I gave blood this morning for my boss’s mother, who just recently got out of the operating room after a big bypass operation. It was an interesting experience, as this was a very posh private hospital. Being used to the M.A.S.H.-triage type situation befitting an American blood drive, it was interesting to go into a room with a single big chair backed up against a wall. Some kind of Green Mile-ish feeling for a second there.

As anyone who’s ever shared a hot drink or warm room or A.C.-less car with me will know, I have fairly staggering circulation (which leads me to think just about any enclosed place is hot). I filled that bag (I think it was the mL equivalent of a pint) in 4 minutes, against a 15 minute expectation. Maybe Turks genetically have poor circulation? This might explain the 27-30 C heated rooms in which people are still wearing heavy coats.

Anyway, it was a good thing I could do it, because O-Neg is hard enough to find, without being in a country that clearly doesn’t have as developed of a blood donation system (although there is one to some extent).

I might posit that one of the most culturally-uncomfortable situations in which you can find yourself might be when somebody in a different culture feels indebted to you. It’s hard to know how to act and what to say, and you’re kind of in the drivers’ seat as far as situation management goes. But, I feel pretty comfortable here now, and I feel like I did the right stuff (meaning, to let them know it was no big deal for me, and to let them know I felt their appreciation). When somebody puts their hand/wrist to their forehead here it’s a pretty serious display of respect or thanks. It’s a cool Eastern kind of thing I’ve only seen a time or two.

One interesting hospitality quirk here is that you should really try not to finish whatever food or drink someone gives you. If you finish, it kind of implies you want more. I suppose American table etiquette mentions this in the most formal of situations, but here it even applies to a serving of tea.

Another unrelated social convention is that people often say “no, thanks” here just by saying “thanks.” That’s hard to adjust to.

People also blink really purposefully to say hi. I had just fairly recently in the US adapted fully to a head-bob and eyebrow raise, and here that’s recognized but not really the right thing. And, while this isn’t at all a bowing culture, it seems a dip of the head is a good idea for basic respect or appreciation. That’s another fun thing.

Kristin caught me several times back in the States using Turkish traffic flow techniques, basically meaning I was subtly jostling people around to get through traffic jams. It seems like nearly all of Europe sees a lot more crowding than does America, but here it can get pretty serious trying to exit mass transit and such.

The folks at work are starting to teach me some slang, which can really build some confidence. I haven’t used my eywallah thank-you yet, but it’s locked and loaded.

1/14/2010 #

New Favorite

My favorite word in the Turkish language is now “arkasında,” which means “behind.” This gets me to work in a taxi perfectly uneventfully.

Had I learned this word earlier, I would have had much less drama in my first year’s rainy day commutes.

On the European side in Istanbul, the streets are a little crooked, and often one-way. Saying something is behind something else is sometimes the best you can do, especially when the target is small and at the bottom of a hill.

1/14/2010 #

Another One Bites the Dust

Final Fantasy III (or is that 6?) is finally completed. Another one I never thought I’d finish.

1/12/2010 #

We Are Implementing Quickly That Good Night

I am very proud of the Sigma progress so far. I hadn’t really gotten into Meta’s combat code in detail until I started my work, but it’s really cool to see it come together. I have confirmed that the project would have died in my hands had there not been someone with the stones to rough something in and see what happens. What happened is good, and we’re starting to carry the ball to the endzone in terms of core functionality.

On a flippant note, my update features the all-time ultimate stub code:

def handle_death(self):
    pass

Death is a pretty important aspect of the game. Not in the Unreal Tournament dopamine-releasing sort of way, but death assigns experience and defines achievement. It’s the next addition and will be a big deal. Like, near-playable demo kind of big deal.

The circa-2000 MUD work has unfortunately been lost, so our design work will have to begin anew. I would assume our young adult perspective would modify our writing and outlook a bit compared to our sophomoric perspective (literally, we were high school sophomores!).

I feel remiss for not releasing a designer program, as we would love people’s help designing, and it’s really no sweat… I promise. Sigma was designed to be easier to design for than the other stuff we’ve worked with, and I think this goal is achieved. This is more an exercise in paragraph writing than programming wizardry. More on this to follow. Even if I don’t effect a designer program soon, the work can be done easily with a text editor and an example template.

I personally think that everyone who reads this blog regularly should eventually design at least one area. But that’s just me. Think of it as an ol’ time barn raisin’.

Now that I’m off the Sigma codebase, I’m actually taking a chance to work on a top secret project, which might be workable sometime soon. I’ve purchased a domain for it, so it’s kind of a big deal.

Brandon's Blog

Let It Snow

With So Much Deception, It's Hard Not to Wander Away

Update

Unbelievable

Blood Money Gives Back

New Favorite

Another One Bites the Dust

We Are Implementing Quickly That Good Night

Turkish of the Day

Texas Flood