04.24.08
When it rains, it pours!
Well, I guess living in a state with a severe drought can skew your perspective. It’s really just more like your average spring storm.
By that I mean– I’ll be doing 20 hr/wk of scripting and coding for Spark Plug Games, starting tomorrow. This is on top of the web software that I’ve contracted to develop for a friend. In addition to that, there will also probably be work with Spark Plug’s parent company in the flash/php space.
Looks like I could very easily be back to 40 hrs/wk pretty quickly with all this going down. Torrential downpours of MONEY!
04.22.08
Bloomington, I’M COMING HOME!
That’s right. The fucking tickets are ordered, I’m a groomsman in a wedding, and ain’t NOBODY gonna stop me this time. Bloomington, prepare to be loved like you ain’t never been loved before. I’ll be gentle.
Take note:
- Arrive Thu, June 5 @ noon (Gonna need a ride to b-town plz!)
- Leave Sun, June 8 @ 5:15pm (Ride again!)
I’ll be at Mike’s wedding on Saturday, and probably some sort of rehearsal on Friday, but otherwise I’m free for anybody that wants to hang out. Expect some quality time at Fester’s and the Vid. I can’t fucking wait.
04.14.08
The XBox360 failure rate is so high…
That the UPS employees can recognize the return packaging on sight.
I walked into UPS to send my system in for repair, and the guy behind the counter says “Is this your first one?” I was a bit bewildered at first so I just replied “Huh? First what?”, “Xbox Return” he replies.
Evidently he can just tell by the size of the box, considering it was plain white, and most boxes are rectangular without too much change in proportions
Current Job Status
Since I’ve still got people asking me what’s going on employment-wise, and I don’t really have much extra to say– I’ll say what I can here.
Things more or less fell through with the casual studio I was in talks with, as they won’t be able to start development until July, and I am definitely in need of employment now. No hard feelings, definitely. The head of the studio is still working hard to get me in as a Flash developer with the parent company. No big change there, just waiting for the hiring guy to get back.
Otherwise, what’s up? I’ve turned in my Tech Test at Emergent, and am just waiting to hear back. Evidently all their HR folks are super-tied-up right now with training new hires (and I hear the head of Gamebryo HR is out for two damn weeks).
Basically, if I don’t hear back about the Flash position this week, I’d bet on my being out of a job for a few weeks at least.
In other news, it’s my fucking birthday! Amie’s taking me out to PF Chang’s tonight (I didn’t really have a preference so I allowed myself to be swayed). She also went out hunting for a present yesterday, and returned with a traditional bag-packaged object of not insubstantial weight. I tried to convince her to let the openings proceed early, but she’d have none of it. I’ll keep you posted.
I’m going to get measured for a tux for Mike’s wedding tonight as well. Any longer and I may miss out on groomsmanship imo.
The Big Damn Blog, courtesy of Indiana
Just got an SMS from my friend Dave that he’s now not only Tour Manager for Reverend Peyton et al, but also the official blogger!
Check out their exploits over at http://hoosierontour.wordpress.com/
…Oh but don’t bother yelling “FIRST”, I already nailed that bitch, just needs to be approved.
04.07.08
My Second Flash Demo!
It’s basically a demo of the concepts that go into flash webpage design. It’s very heavily Homestar-Runner inspired, as well.
On Flash and its Idiosyncrasies
I’ve become fond recently of saying that “Flash is as professional-grade as Y is a vowel.” The thing just befuddles me in some ways, while being really neat in others.
I’ve definitely become a fan of just drawing stuff on the screen with Flash, because the vector conversion makes all my lines look really deliberate and sharp, where in real life they’re nothing but (it takes a special kind of algorithm to create cool stuff from freehand mouse-drawing). Tweening is also really cool, with all the control you have over ease of transition, etc.
Then you get to the programming aspect of Flash and the pungent reek of terrible design slaps you in the face like month-old fish. I respect that they made their own custom scripting language, and it’s passable for that– but then adding in OO-style classes, and I’m like… wtf– how does that tie in with Flash’s concept of an object: “Symbols”?
I’ve been able to so far bypass any OO style programming with flash, and put any object-specific code into the symbol’s own actionscript file, but I get the feeling that won’t last.
I also effing hate the IDE. If you want to earn my love, you will use an open language that produces plain text code files, and that can be integrated with something like MS Studio or Eclipse. They have invented not only the wheel, but also suspension, A/C, and internal combustion. There is no reason to try to do it better.
I’ve been keeping my projects in a local SVN repository, and it really pisses me off that even the source for these things is binary. At least give me something that can be parsed and diff’d by Subversion!
Ugh, closed-standard-mongering asshats.
04.02.08
Consolidation is the way
So, I got uber-stressed yesterday. I’ve been promising my friends back home that I’d come visit them (and then breaking said promises) since forever. First it was early December for a party, then it was January… February. The most recent offense was my promise that I would visit for the Rock n Roll Prom at the Bluebird in April… Go on and take a guess how that’s turning out. I’ll wait.
So Kristen just posted on facebook asking if I’d be leaping joyously into her arms in 17ish days, and I have to say that up til this point I had been totally planning on it. I’ve just put off ordering the tickets until I hear definitively on this job. After getting another no-news update on the job, I decide fuck it– these tickets aren’t gonna stay cheap forever, so I decide to bite the bullet and plunk em on the credit card.
It is at this point that the price jumps by $40-$80 per ticket.
I decided that with the cost and the really fucking shitty travel times available, that I’m just going to have to put it off, yet again. My buddy Mike is getting married in June, and I’ll just make that an extended trip.
Sorry Kristen! 
