Props and Links

I came across Kyle Wilson's excellent web page/blog today. There are a lot of good little articles on there about game design, stuff that I generally find intriguing/exciting. I enjoyed his articles on an Object Registry and Data-Driven Design. What's interesting is that he apparently works for Day 1 Studios (with locations in downtown Chicago and Sparks, Maryland - I'm guessing this guy is in Maryland). Anyway, I'm going to make sure I read each and every one of his articles because this guy is doing exactly what I wish I was doing so he is now officially my hero.

He also wrote a brief article on GDC 2004 so I was able to read up on what the conference was like last year. I think Rob and I are going to try and write something similar about the Expo side of things this year (28 days and counting!).

He also linked to an excellent article about the many forms of software development from the always-interesting Joel Spolsky which I enjoyed.

§40 · February 9, 2005 · Software, Technology · Comments Off on Props and Links ·

Carving DVDs (Step 2)

Read Step 1 first.

Although my interests in digital video are currently taking a backseat to game development, web programming and general Linux administrativeness, I thought I'd add a second entry to this series that discusses the software I used to create my DVDs from analog video sources. Read the rest of this entry ...

§38 · February 8, 2005 · Technology, Video · Comments Off on Carving DVDs (Step 2) ·

Craptcha!

After getting bombed with some comment spam yesterday (over 15 of them in various blog entries), I decided I wanted some extra security, but I didn't want to have to approve every comment (especially when the majority of them were spam). So I thought I'd dig into some PHP again and design my own Captcha.

This little project proved to be more challenging than I thought it would be, the easiest part was generating the unique and random image every time, the hardest part was figuring out how to make sure the image was not reused again (even if the user clicks the "Back" button on his browser). While I won't get into the details right here and now, suffice to say that it works completely now and I can now work on making the image even more difficult for a computer to read in the future...if anyone wants it let me know (leave a comment, heh) and I'll post a subsequent entry about some of the details and put the source up.

Anyway, I hope it's not too annoying to those who wish to leave comments...

§34 · February 5, 2005 · PHP, Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Craptcha! ·

Matters of State – Part Three

Read Part One and Part Two first. If you don't already own a copy of "Design Patterns" by the Gang of Four I would recommend checking it out, since it seems to be the definitive reference.

This entry will continue the discussion on the State Design Pattern. It will be broken up into two parts: a) Responses from feedback I've received on the previous two articles and b) Explanation of how we handle input events at the base State class while still providing flexibility for concrete states to implement their own input event handlers. Read the rest of this entry ...

§32 · February 3, 2005 · C++, Software, Technology · Comments Off on Matters of State – Part Three ·

Let My Data Go…or else…

A couple days ago, when I finally got around to installing Linux and configuring my old PC as a 24x7 server, I had the notion that I'd like to make daily (or at least weekly) backups of the databases behind my websites (my forum and my blog primarily). The MySQL databases are provided by my hosting company (GoDaddy.com). However, when I sent an email to them asking why I couldn't seem to connect a local mysqldump to the database servers they responded stating it was not allowed since it was a security risk and put unknown load upon their servers. Being the type of guy I am, I decided to do something about that. Read the rest of this entry ...

§31 · February 2, 2005 · PHP, Software, Technology, Tips, Web · 5 comments ·

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