Maniacal Rage
Here are my most recent posts:
Ted Olson on Fox News (via david and charlietodd)
Ted Olson, supporter of the recent California ruling to allow same sex marriages, also supports the right to completely destroy Fox News’ Chris Wallace in every way imaginable.
I can’t believe we’re still debating this whole issue and that there are people in our country who are against gay marriage, but if someone has to keep explaining things I’m glad there are people like Ted Olson around.
Stay.app
I’ve been waiting for something like this for years. The single worst part of using a MacBook Pro as your primary computer, and going from using a Cinema Display to the laptop alone, is that windows in OS X are absolutely terrible about retaining their locations and sizes. Windows will frequently jump to random places, half off the screen, it’s horrible.
For many years I have been complaining to anyone who will listen that Apple should be solving this problem directly in OS X, especially since a majority of Apple’s customers are laptop users. This issue continues to be ignored, however.
Enter Stay.app, which allows you to store desired locations of windows for all applications in multiple states (laptop screen only, plus external display, external display only) and the app can automatically switch between them when the display setup changes. In addition, you can use Stay.app to restore window positions even without changing your display arrangement.
I couldn’t get my credit card out fast enough for this purchase.
Anonymous asks: "Do you think you are an anomaly? Seriously — most people who are designers are not good at developing, or vice versa. But you seem to be not only good at design, but a pretty damn good developer — I know you have worked with PHP, Ruby, and now Objective-C and iPhone dev. How do you do all of this?"
Anomaly is a strong word—there are a lot of people who both design and develop. While I consider myself more a developer, I do enjoy designing for the most part and I’m lucky enough to be decent at it. But I could never go head-to-head with an actual designer.
Development, however, I’ve always found much easier to get into. You learn the language, you learn the tools, and you’re off to the races. You can be very creative with it, but I rarely have that stall moment at the beginning of the project where I have NO IDEA where to start. I feel like that all the time when I open Photoshop. Development is much more comfortable for me.
As far as languages go, in my storied career to date I have written PHP, ASP 2.0, ColdFusion (haha, remember CF??), Ruby, Rails, and Objective-C. Of course, there’s also HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL, etc. As far as HOW I’ve done all of it… I’m not sure. I play around a lot. I see something new, I immediately start messing around with it. I’ve learned a lot of these languages out of professional necessity as well. ASP and ColdFusion came from jobs early last decade. PHP in the late 90s because I wanted to build a better personal website. Rails (and therefore Ruby) because it was loads of fun and everyone was doing it. Objective-C so that I could build applications I wanted (like xPad and Ego), and eventually so I could make a solid living from building fun applications for an awesome platform. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.
Oscar Napping (View bigger at Flickr)
It’s lazy cat Friday. Although for cats, that’s every day.
Video Game Pitch Idea #27
Titanic: The Movie: The Game (title not final):
You play Leonardo DiCaprio (not his character), you’re on the Titanic and you’re looking around the ship for women. But you’re stuck in the grimy bottom decks and to get good tail, you’ll need to make your way to the top. To do this, you’ll have to win poker games and slapping contests, as well as dance.
The poker mechanics will be simple—three-card hands, highest sum wins (face cards will be removed from the deck for simplicity and realism, we assume the people on the grime decks were probably not very intelligent)—and the slapping contests will be twitch-based combat. Just one button for slap, one for block. The dancing will require the player to press one button to raise a knee up and down and another button to hit the knee with a hand. Optional control could allow player to whistle or yell random phrases like, “Yeeee-haw!” and “I wish I had money!”
Once your character makes enough cash, a scripted event will occur—the door to the stairwell will fall off its hinges and you’ll be able to move up to the main deck and being to mingle with the wealthy passengers. We’ll have some really great AI here. All the women (distinguishable by the oversized hats) will appropriately respond to your character’s interactions with them. For the player, the system will be fairly simple—you’ll approach a women and press the “interact” button, which will present you with three phrases: (1) How are you? (2) I am Leonardo. (3) Can we make love in the car I saw on a lower deck? (None of these phrases are final.) If the player chooses option three too quickly, the woman will walk away.
After several interactions, your character will fall in love and then a series of scripted events will occur: You will have intercourse with the woman (censored for E rating), you will pretend to fly on the edge of the ship, the ship will hit an iceberg. You’ll get separated from the woman and you’ll find a pistol on the main deck. Iceberg creatures will begin to attack you from all sides and you’ll have to fend them off with your weapon while making your way through the crowds of socialites, all of whom are running to the edge of the ship and jumping off. Once you’ve destroyed all the iceberg creatures and their boss (the Queen), you’ll find your woman and then the ship will sink.
● This is from my vast archive of terrible fiction. It was originally written on June 10, 2006.
Delinquent Kids Need Big Brothers (More CS Crash Reports)
Summer (View bigger at Flickr)
