Coke And Code - Java Games and Games Development - Life

The Drugs don't Work

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:39:49 +0000

For various reasons I've been pretty stressed lately, unfortunately meaning I've not been sleeping more than an hour or two a night. Apart from being extremely unhealthy, it's made me pretty non-functional in the day. So.. I went to the see the doctor who as they tend to do, provided me with tablets to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, they don't work very well. I'm told the way they're supposed to work is to relax you before sleep, to quiet the mind as it were, allowing you to drop off naturually and sleep through. They worked pretty well for a day but since I've just been stuck with the mind spinning, stomach churning restlessness in bed... waiting to fall asleep.

I've tried warm milk, I've tried sleeping downstairs, I've tried tiring myself out playing with Meg - but to no avail. Maybe I need to go back to coding all night.. talking of which...

Still Ill - Life Update

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:21:45 +0000

Three weeks now, of coughing, aching and feeling lethargic. This sucks. I've never had a cold thats lasted so long. So far, lots of pain killers have kept me in work and getting on with life but I'm starting to feel pretty sick of it all.

Work is actually going ok, we seem to have moved past the paralysis and are finally getting on with things. Lots of things kicking off and lots of meetings. Looks like there are actually decision being made, woo hoo!

Family wise things are about normal, though Meg is a little under the weather and Cath is generally worked up more than normal.

I think things would be pretty good if I could just shake this sickness.

A Suggestion to Banks - OPT

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:54:13 +0000

Unfortunately just recently I've been the vicitm of credit card fraud. They've not taken much as yet - just bought a few bits and pieces of WoW - but it's still depressing and inconvienient to have someone else spending you money. I'll get the money back of course and the card in question is already cancelled but still.

Being the geeky IT bloke that I am I can't help trying to solve the issue, so here it is, the solution.

Assumptions

1) The internet is considered a prominent part of credit card fraud. This is mostly because once card details have been stolen and/or skimmed they can be used on a wealth of online sites with little or no validation.
2) Stopping people using their cards is just dumb, it's inconvinence to the consumer and not to the fraudster. They win.
3) Everyone who uses online shopping, has an email address.
4) Banks, Vendors and Credit Agencys want to stop fraud. It's not productive or commercially positive for any of them.

Solution

The system would require some updates to online credit/debit card validation for online sites. Here's the use case:

1) The consumer signs up with the bank for a credit/debit card. As part of this they can choose to provide an idenitifed email address that can only be changed via the bank.
2) When an online card transaction is being validated via the bank the vendor's system is required to send a confirmation email to the address registered with the central bank system.
2a) Ideally the system allows the vendor to send the bank a confirmation URL and the bank forwards on the email to the registered address.
3) The consumer is displayed a message saying the transaction is pending until confirmation.
4) The consumer checks they're mail, clicks the confirmation URL and the transaction is completed as before.

I call it OPT - Online Payment Tracking. I'll even give you a slogan "OPT in, to prevent online fraud". The idea is free, no consultancy charge, just do it!

Why this is good!

1) This doesn't appear like it'd take much organisation or change given the online checks already have to contact banks to confirm credit status.
2) The email address is centralised, no more relying on the address that was registered for the [insert vendor name here] account.
3) The consumer gets record sent to them electronically of every transaction. It's just like the credit card reciept you get on top of the shop's reciept physically.
4) It prevents online fraud. The fraudster would have to get your email account details. They'd have to know where the email address was hosted to even start this process which has no visibility to the external user.
5) This doesn't reduce security. It's extra and optional. If the consumer doesn't care enough or is scared of technology, thats fine, don't use it.

So, please please please implement it.

EDIT: This could be made one step easier for the banks actually. Just send me an email with each online transaction on my card. Let me click a link to mark is as fraud. Vendors don't even need to care then.

Two Years Old!

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:35:16 +0000

Meggy, my little girl, was two years old on Saturday! Go Meggy! If you've been following the blog since she was a scan picture on a blog then thanks :)

She had a very good birthday - 3 parties, one at nursery, one with little friends (read 7 kids running round my house :)) and one for family in which she was very confused and tired :). Loads of nice presents from nice people and a whole lot of ice cream and jelly and she's done for this year.

It's been a great two years with lots of up and downs. So very interesting what happens to your mind the older they get. Anywhere, here's a Daddy photo of his adorable little girl:

Back from Cyprus

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:56:39 +0000

I've been back at work two days and I'm already wishing on I was back on holiday, even though I was glad to come home when I did. Wierd huh?

I worried alot about the travelling, mostly about going on a flight (which I hate) but also taking Meg on a 5 hour flight each way. Shouldn't have worried, she was great, slept a lot, hardly cried at all - even coped with the wonderful (sic) Pafos airport. Both ways was easy and we almost enjoyed the flight. Travelling late at night wasn't the best, we got there at midnight and got home at 5am.

Still, it was a wonderful resort, looked a bit like this (though we stayed on the other nicer side of the resort ;)):

Good fun was had by all, especially Meg. She was dancing every night and really enjoyed the pirate ship, the splash pool and more than anything the free ice cream. The day times were spent sleeping or splashing about in the pool. The afternoons and evenings exploring, eating and being entertained - all nice.

While the resort was great, Pafos isn't up to much as a toursit hot spot. My advice would be not to bother.

Everyone we met was great, including all the staff. Many thanks in particular to the creche staff who did such a good job of making Meg feel at home she really didn't want to leave them behind.

Back to work now tho...

Holiday

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:14:01 +0000

Holiday, yes it's finally here. I'm off work for a week and traveling around a bit. Get some sun and some culture. Taking Meg on a plane is a daunting thought though. I'll post photos when I'm back this time honest.

The most important thing is I'm not at work :)

Less Coke More Code

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:03:36 +0000

Well it's finally happened, I'm getting old. As such I've decided to cut down on my intake of coke a bit. This may seem trivial to some, but given my initial consumption was around 8 cans in the day and the equivilent of 5 cans in the evening it's probably worth doing :) 13 cans of coke a day is apparantly (as percentages of a adult's guideline per day):

Calories: 91%
Sugars: 507%

Cutting down seem like a good plan, no? I've been slowly taking the levels at work down, replacing it with water and squash where possible. Today is my first day on 2 cans at work (one for lunch, one in the afternoon slump). It's been a painful process so far, with my mood and energy levels going all over the place.

One interesting thing I have noticed so far is the affect on my development practices. I'm still staying up all night coding (I think this is habbit) but the time is spent far more effectively. I can focus on a single task for longer periods without getting distracted by some random conversation on IRC. I've also found my code to be tighter and more robust, almost like I'm modelling again - rather than coding.

Health wise I've not seen any improvement, hopefully that'll come with the rest of the diet changes and maybe even some exercise. Wait, no, thats going to far.

Children's Game Websites

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:56:26 +0000

I'm lucky, I have an excuse to be playing kids games on free websites. My daughter, who's nearly two, loves playing on the computer - clicking colourful things and getting wierd noises.

I've always been a fan of the CBeebies website, it has a lot of familiar shows that she enjoys on the TV. However, being the hobbiest game developer I am, I can't help but evaluate the games on the site and can see that they both are lacking in design and polish.

Thats why it was such a refreshing change to see the Disney Playhouse site - Meg has a need for Tigger everything just recently. The games are incredibly polished with really high quality audio and visuals. The site itself is well organized and loads quickly even on my terrible connection.

The thing that struck me most was the quality of the game design though. Each game we (I) played was really top notch. In some parts Meg got annoyed with me because I wanted to carry on playing the game. Some of the game design is so good I couldn't help but thing an adult remake of it for the casual market could be a hit (I took notes of course :)).

I am left feeling slightly overwhelmed with how good these "throw away" games are and how far I have still to go to produce anything like as good.

My Boss reads My Blog!

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:52:36 +0000

Intersting turn up, my boss reads my blog. So, kiss good bye to any truth relating to my working existence. On the bright side, reading my recent performance post did make him aware how tedious I was finding the benchmarking (I expect he was at least partially already due to the negative attitude I give off atm).

We all know that there a bit of work you don't enjoy. Sometimes there are jobs that just have to be done. Thats alright, we have to do them - get them finished and move on.

That doesn't stop them being boring of course. Accepting that they have to be done doesn't make it easier to do them, and it certainly wouldn't stop me complaining about them :) (what would?).

Attempting to keep positive at work is tricky, especially without the ability to rant my arse off here.

Performance - here and there

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:12:05 +0000

It's interesting when home stuff and work collide.

At work, I'm now spending my time looking at performance. Thats not really fair, I'm looking at performance, I have the wonderfully entertaining job of getting benchmark figures for our cluster. You remember I mentioned I had food poisoning over the weekend? Well, that was more fun than this. I'm bored out of my tiny little mind most of the day which probably explains why I'm blogging now.

On the home stuff at the moment, I'm looking at performance. Working out why the graphics cards appears to like some approaches and not others. Understanding the VM a little more to see how I can squeeze a little more path finding and line of sight checks out of it each frame. This is pure entertainment, understanding details and seeing results instantly.

Still, as always both feed into each other. What I learn in one domain often applies to the other. Like the future of 64bit object references in the JVM. Probably post about that later.

Done and Done

Tue, 27 May 2008 10:52:13 +0000

Well, there we go, it's been a few months since I got stressed and now for some reason I am. The last week or so it's been building up and now I'm going out of my head. Every question is an annoyance, every idiot that would normally be ignored is intolerable.

I'm sure I had a holiday not a few weeks ago but suddenly the world seems to be closing in. Still searching for that way out of this life style but I've started to settle on another 20-30 years of this stuff.

Never mind huh, just cut out the bits that arn't enjoyable any more, unfortunately thats likely to mean a bunch of stuff like JGO, tutorials and examples.

Still, my little girl has started talking nicely so thats an up swing. Meg always seem to be providing some positive. However, she may have noticed the general feeling though, reflected in her first clear statement:

"oh dear oh dear oh dear"

Whats happening!

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:01:59 +0000

As you can see Coke and Code has a new look, but really thats it. Nothing's changing. I felt like having an arty night so I spent a while (with a lot of help! you know who you are) fiddling around with the theme and CSS. The terrible logo was of course created by me.

There have been a lot of Slick fixes and extensions over the last few days so I may let that soak for a while and get back to the Putty Puzzle.

In other news my Wife has finally had the injection in her foot to relieve the pain, and is currently suffering. Meg is running around the garden every night and generally having a great old time - isn't speaking much yet though, anyone got any tips for encouraging young'uns?

Oh, and BBQ at the weekend at the Kev Homstead. Woo.

Nonsense

Tue, 13 May 2008 23:54:03 +0000

Some days it's just all nonsense. All of it. Every minute of the day, nonsense. From the moment I get Meg up in the morning, through the working day, through the evening, through the early hours on forums and coding, all the way until I get into bed and wait for it to start again.

Today, has been one of those days.

- No, driving like a mad thing just because the sun is shining doesn't make sense.
- No, I can't just let her wander around without worrying, its my job to worry.
- No, providing a crap solution that looks to the unenlightened like it matches the current requirements but doesn't give us any room to move later isn't a good idea.
- No, documenting two features that look identical as identical on the same page, when they're not isn't useful.
- No, I don't care that you haven't done your homework and you'd like me to do it for you, sending me email with the assignment in won't help.
- No, writing 3D games doesn't take you to the "next level" of game programming, unless of course you started from no games at all. Thinking so does say a lot about you though.
- No, my internet connection isn't any good and I can't play the game, hell I can't even upload my stuff most of the time.

Irksome irritations from beyond the ether, be gone! For tomorrow is another day!

Holiday!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:56:46 +0000

Off on holiday next week, to the sea side. I'm really looking forward to it and believe it or not, no laptop, no internet, no code!

So, next week, might be a bit quiet.

Some days arn't so good...

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:05:12 +0000

She's still ill, or at least sad. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do to cheer her up and the throat is still keeping her up. I haven't slept properly for a week now. She's generally better, but still not eating.

The last two days have been long work days, around 11 hours a day. Finally work is coming back up, I'm starting to get somewhere - but the lack of sleep is starting to make it hard to focus. Understand that I spend a lot of the night coding anyway, so it's not that unusual for me to get 4 hours sleep and be fine. Right now, it's just not even reaching that stage. Still, at least I've made some progress this week.

Now, home stuff is really suffering. I've done no game stuff since the weekend, apart from update the spec for the *big* game. Now I check the Slick forums, and while people seem to be using it theres a definite trend away - I guess thats to be expected given how long it's been going.

What I need is a little game to write now, tonight, to get me awake and alive again, but the lack of sleep just isn't letting me think of anything. Time to hack..