Hootwaggers

This post is mainly for Christer Ericson, who has a great book and a blog with the longest name imaginable. I can’t believe I have to type all that!

I’ve not met Christer in person, only conversed by email and phone, but I think we’re kindred spirits. He has been described to me as an angry Viking and given post such as exhibit A and exhibit B that’s not terribly surprising.

To be inflammatory I wanted to leave the post just as: Don’t do middleware. Or if I was going to be clever, i’d paraphrase Bowie:

My mother said to get things done
You’d better not mess with middleware

I don’t know if I have anything constructive to add. Or profound. Or insightful. fmod and havok maybe the only exceptions to the rule, but even havok has its issues.

It’s the pieces of middleware that want to abstract all platforms and hide initialization from you and take over memory management and present scene graphs and pollute your code with “smart“ pointers that take offense to. (I’ve been battling with one for the past 2 days, trying to enable GCM replay support and it still doesn’t work! <grrrr>)

In my experience middleware is seductive in the beginning. You can quickly get a simple test up and running and management likes the quick progress you make and trading money for engineering effort sounds like a good thing. It’s all lust.

But that’s where the love affair usually stops.

You don’t get pass the quick hack and all those little issues you thought you could live with suddenly become barriers which you have to deal with in your code base everyday.

Using multiple pieces of middleware just magnifies the problem.

Each one has is own vector and transform class, its own array class, its own magic memory manager system that wants to take over all allocations. This leads to insanity and spending all your time converting between one representation of a transformation to another. (And they’re likely to have exactly the same memory layout)

Casey has a presentation that sums it up nicely.

On another note, I haven’t updated this blog in ages and I might melt it down for scrap. I’ve moved to Vancouver from Brisbane and should probably write about all the difference. But it would be only for my own gratification since no-one is reading this. Except for maybe Christer when I prod him to do so.

FAIL!

Suzy and I went to see the latest instalment in the Indiana Jones franchise yesterday. Awesome!

Sure it’s over the top and unbelievable, but it’s a movie. Sheesh. Has Western culture been so spoilt that nothing can surprise, but only disappoint?

And for more awesomeness, I showed Dylan Lego India Jones. The demo is pure awesomeness and he takes me to EB each week to try find the game. The game doesn’t come out til June 3rd, but try telling that to a 5 year old.

Being born in the mid-70s, I was in my “informative” years when these shows were first run on Saturday morning kids television. Nickelodeon has nothing on these awesome shows!

Edit: Updated with Robotech. Skull Squadron FTW!!one!!!

A photo I took at Mt. Coot-tha Botanic Gardens was selected by Schmaps for their Australia Park Guide. How cool is that!

Here’s the content of the email I received:

:: Schmap Australia Second Edition: Photo Inclusion

Hi Daniel,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released
second edition of our Schmap Australia Guide:

Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens
http://www.schmap.com/australia/parks/p=126213/i=126213_4.jpg

If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal
page, then please also check out the customizable
widgetized versions of our Schmap Australia Guide, complete
with your published photo:

http://www.schmap.com/guidewidgets/p=56725328N00/c=SG35011834

Thanks so much for letting us include your photo - please
enjoy the guide!

Best regards,
<Name Supplied>
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

So it was that I started work at The Creative Assembly here in Brisbane. Of the original staff I’m the 7th hire of a now 50 odd strong team. In the last 5 years we’ve completed 2 projects, Rome and Medieval 2, CA has been purchased by Sega and we’ve created a studio.

I wonder what will happen in the next 5 years?

A picture is worth a thousand words!

I had tears and it hurt to laugh anymore. I dunno. Must be a boy thing.

Suzy and I have been trying to teach Caity to ride a her BMX without training wheels.

This has been no tall order!

For anyone that knows Caity, they may have come her Perfectionist nature, where she’s reluctant to given anything a go if she doesn’t think she’ll manage to achieve it with her first attempt. Both Suzy and I were at a loss for “motivational techniques”—I hopped on a neighbours BMX and just started riding it before my 5th birthday and Suzy had an adorable Grandma that loaded her and her sisters onto their bikes and ran them down a slope on their farm. When they fell or crashed, she brushed the girls off and took them back to the top. Rub. Rinse. Repeat.

Anyhow, Caity’s school is having a fair at a local park and the kids can ride their bikes there. What better motivation technique than peer pressure! After a couple of 1 hour sessions on a Sunday afternoon she’s started to get the hang of it. She can ride up our street, turn around at the top and ride back down. The life preserving skill of keeping calm when facing an unexpected challenge is still not a concept Caity’s grasped, resulting in letting go of hand bars and trying to general bail instead of using brakes to stop. I’m of the opinion that pain was meant to train that brain in what not to do.

Photos after the jump, including me riding a girlie 16″ BMX. I did manage to pull the head stem out trying to do a bunny hop. (As an pre-teen I used to ride competitive BMX. It was the 80’s and “Rat’s Tails” and fluro-coloured sock were the rage)

RidingPractice

There is one internet meme that has captured my imagination and it won’t go away: LOLcats. I think it’s the nature of the captions that is the hook. I’ve been using teh Intarweb for so long now (Read 15 years. Truly! Since ‘92 - Ah Usenet and FTP on Wyse terminals) that the web has become truly second nature and part of my social culture. Adding cats to that is, well, just funny.

The I can haz cheezburger?!1! site has a good collection. I check it each day for my morning chuckle.