Monday, 08:22 pm, 28 March 2005

What Shape For Noble Ape?

I have written in the Log frequently about writing the mailout. It is an interesting discipline writing something each month about the Noble Ape development. Sometimes I catch myself writing lucidly during the Mailout.

This month's mailout is a good example of a relatively lucid mailout. I write in this month's mailout about an email from Mridul P that I received over the weekend. For the first time in a number of months I have been concentrating on the Windows code. The main reason is the server I picked up in Las Vegas is a Windows machine. I would like the Simulation to run ''stable'' on Windows for days. The Simulation consumes a huge quantity of processing power and thus when you run the Simulation on any machine, backup fans go on, and machines heat up.

Mridul's contribution to the Simulation has been in doing a lot of the bits of code, I wouldn't get around to doing for six plus months. The stuff that interests me with the Simulation is in the Simulation core and to a lesser extent the platform independent graphics. Mridul likes the OS end of the code.

Kant or Won't

I received an email today from Adam Savage of the Discovery Channel's Myth Busters. Adam was emailing be about the Carbon Kant Generator.

I get about ten searches a month about the Kant Generator. To paraphrase my email back to Adam, I spent about six weeks working on the Kant Generator;

(1) Getting it to compile for Mac Classic,

(2) Working to remove the TextEdit code, and integrate MLTE code, and,

(3) Removing the intertwined Classic and platform independent code.

The easier option is to take the existing and maintained scripting code and integrate it through Cocoa. This isn't something I can do currently. I can rewrite the scripting rule code and allow for aggressive memory management. But, as this Log shows, my spare time is taken by Noble Ape and DarwinAtHome.

As Seen In Reality... Television

Being in this part of the world, I occasionally channel surf. I'm impressed by the amount of airtime the IGDA's Jason Della Rocca receives on G4TV. Between Jason and Doug Rushkoff, it's nice to see familiar faces on the tube.

The impact of the commercial aspects of the IGDA on computer game television narratives is impressive. The alternative game history and impact doesn't yet seem to be tracked. In fact, of the quarter billion, one in four has been on television and the majority element of programming seems to miss the niches. The amount of info-mercial programming accounts for roughly half the programs aired at any given time. What a waste of broadcast bandwidth. Aliens watching the television space of the US must have a very skewed view. This alien certainly does.

Good night.
Saturday, 04:11 pm, 26 March 2005

Aside from the WeFunk shout out, it has been a while since I showed any Fred Reed classics on the Log. This shot with a zoom, shows some Ogres I have commissioned from Fred as part of my first Fred Reed commissioned army. The remit asked Fred to paint them as cheaply as possible. Mainly because Fred paints to a quality which I would feel guilty to chip/play with. I requested roughly half the usual quality Fred paints to, and the results are still stunning.

I'm hoping to have the mailout online in the next couple of days. The conversation on the DarwinAtHome mailing list has picked up in recent days together with the IGDA IPR Committee's tracking of the '690 patent. The newsletter out to the 6,000 members netted about twenty emails that I forwarded to the Committee working group. On Monday, the newsletter goes out to 90,000 non-member subscribers.

It is going to be a fun long weekend.

My closing note, my wife has returned to her C&W roots being back in this part of the world. I'm sticking to WeFunk. We were driving through the country-side yesterday when the track She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy came on the radio. I thought to myself what is the nerd version of the song? My email girlfriend who could really be a 65-year-old man thinks my hard drive configuration is sexy!. I'm thankful for the Chuck D station ID for WeFunk. Yeehaa!

And good afternoon.
Friday, 10:29 pm, 25 March 2005

Sorry for the lack of Log updates. I am hoping to fix this over the next week.

In the interim, huge props to DJ Static and Professor Groove for their recent trip to NYC as guests of Public Enemy. WeFunk has gone full circle. Proof of the impact of WeFunk is the Show ID from Chuck D.

Groove and Static are collecting for the CKUT funding drive over the next couple of weeks. I have donated CAN$250 to CKUT for another great year of WeFunk. WeFunk has been my staple walking music through my MP3 player for about a year and my staple background music for about three years now.

Peace! And good night.
Tuesday, 05:18 pm, 22 March 2005

Out of Las Vegas and back in the desert, which has been surprisingly grey. I picked up a couple of PC laptops and a server for a song thanks to my wife's sister's housemate. Familiar connections sometimes bring in the hardware. I purchased a standard edition of VC++ 6.0 in 2001 and I have been carrying it with me ever since waiting for a PC laptop to install it on.

Using my new found PC development environment I updated the Noble Ape Simulation's Windows code and put it online. I have divided the old code with the active Simulation code for Windows and Mac. This legacy change reduces the downloadable by about 60% and gives the benefit of what you need is what you get.

Getting the scripting language final implementation is the next step. I have it almost completed. I just need a couple more additions. I might have something completed after the next mailout.

Good afternoon.
Friday, 11:53 pm, 18 March 2005

Open Source Maturity... Moron... Why Did I Buy This Book? Moron!

My sister-in-law is a manager at Barnes and Noble. I thought it would be a good opportunity to pick up a couple of frivolous purchases. One book that drew my attention and I ended up purchasing was Succeeding with Open Source by Bernard Golden and published by the good people at Addison-Wesley.

Do not buy this book.

Here is the premise. There is a percentage scoring system. When you reach 70%, everyone uses your open source software.

40% ''Software''
20% ''Support''
10% ''Documentation''
10% ''Training''
10% ''Integration''
10% ''Professional Services''

It's called the Open Source Maturity Model or OSMM. Here are my problems with the book and the OSMM.

(1) Every section is broken down into subsections so you can specifically rate your software. So if you have online documentation and tutorials, then you get points for those sections. All the sections are broken down bar the ''Software'' section. So that is 40% you don't know about to the level of detail that you know the remaining sections.

(2) Let me take the ''Documentation'' section as an example breakdown. This repeats through most of the other sections;

2 points, Developer-Created (Documentation)
3 points, Web Postings

So you have good developer created documentation and lots of web postings. Half the total is made up by;

5 points, Commercially published documentation

Funnily enough this Golden fellow is in the business of selling commercial services to pad you dwindling OSMM points. The tens of thousands of hours you have put into developing your software is worthless. The best you can score on the OSMM that you can work out through the book you spent forty bucks on is about 30%, 40% if you feel you can score 10% on the unusual ''Software'' scoring system.

So I was scammed. I deserve to be scammed, I bought the book. It made me think that I should track the 90+ source code downloaders per month. Track them like the fox.

Did They Do This With The Taliban?

Subconsciously, as I purchased the Golden book of Open Source, I felt I needed a book as divergent as possible. The reprint of the US War Department Handbook on the German Military Forces (circa 1945) seemed a step in the right direction.

This is a truly fascinating book as it details the German military to a level of minutia that could not be done in a historical account and also provides a cloudless view of history. The ability to chronicle the German army as only an American bureaucracy could is an impressive feat. I often feel that the US and German armies were very similar in style and this book goes to great lengths to acknowledge the similarities and differences in a very pragmatic and ordered fashion.

The only problem I have with the book is it was written as the German army was cracking. Although the book is a facsimile of a handbook that had been added to progressively during the war, it would have been interesting to read what the US War department thought of the German army at an earlier phase in the war. This document in its earlier forms must have been used to justify or at least weigh the US entering the war.

He's Got the Viva...

Day 4 1/2 of being in Las Vegas and the Strip is seeming too familiar to me. It is strange seeing Las Vegas both as a functioning human city and also this central area which is garish at best. I can't get past the slot machines and the sense of the elderly spending their savings whilst watching the lights flash.

This is punctuating with spending quality time with my wife's sisters who we haven't seen for any length of time for many years.

Good night

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