Radio Free Lunch

King of Dragon Pass for iOS is out!

2011-09-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

My game King of Dragon Pass is now available in the iPhone App Store!

King of Dragon Pass Is In Review

2011-08-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

The iPhone game I’ve been working on is now waiting for review in the App Store!

I originally created King of Dragon Pass for Windows and Mac, but have been porting it to iOS. It’s optimized for the screen size of an iPhone or iPod touch, but runs fine on iPad.

Review: Seized

2011-02-28T19:51:00.000-08:00

Seized: A Sea Captain’s Adventures Battling Soundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World’s Most Troubled Waters — with a subtitle like that, do I really need to say more?

This is in fact a first-person account of an honest captain’s dealings with the seamier side of the modern shipping business. In some ports around the world, people abuse local law and make fraudulent claims against ships. The crew (and owner) often have little recourse. Captain Max hated the idea of his ship being stolen by a bogus claim, and managed to get it out of port. He was later called on to do the same.

At other times in his career, he acts as a ship broker, again dealing with locals who may not have quite the same respect for law as he does. In fact, he even uses the law as a weapon in one case.

As a book, I found Seized well-written and interesting. As a gamer, I immediately wanted to make use of it in a game. Surely the players’s spaceship should dock at an outlaw port! And Captain Max might have made a Climb roll or two, but typically he solved problems with his wide array of contacts, his ability to judge people, and his broad knowledge of ships.

It’s the last one that makes me reconsider game scenarios based on Seized. While any reasonable game doesn’t require a player to have the same knowledge as his character, there’s a difference between not knowing what a MacGregor hatch cover is, and knowing that your character knows about their pros and cons of one, and how they may impact his actions. Without sea-going experience, I think it would just be too hard to have a game that revolved around the intricacies of JB Weld.

But again, that sort of thing works fine in a book. Hardberger always explains things so us landlubbers can understand. And the events in the book are always dramatic, because there is always a very real chance of failure (indeed, he recounts stories when things did not end up going well).

Another issue with game scenarios is that I’d been running a Diaspora game, where a spaceship visits a small number of ports. Many of the outlaw ports in Seized can get away with it because a ship may only visit once even if all goes well. In a smaller cluster, ports have a much greater interest in ships returning — there won’t always be another sucker.

A recommended read, and even if I can’t easily duplicate Captain Max’s adventures, there probably will be corrupt judges in one of my future games.

Review: A History of the World in 6 Glasses

2011-02-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

Since I enjoyed Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet, I picked up A History of the World in 6 Glasses. This covers the history of the six beverages that “chart the flow of world history:” beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola.

Most of the book was about the history of the drinks, and how they were regarded at the time (for example, Native Americans didn’t want to drink unless they could get drunk). The section I found most interesting was about how tea (and its monopolist, the British East India Company) was a major cause of American independence (the famous Boston Tea Party was the result of a law dictated by the company).

An interesting read, recommended.

Reviews: Debugging and Write Portable Code

2010-12-13T18:32:00.000-08:00

Two books I bought recently were ones I expected to be easy going. They were, but I think they were still worthwhile.

Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems by David J Agans is about, well, debugging. Anything, not just software. It’s full of war stories from many domains (including cars, houses, and Sesame Street). The rules are how to logically approach problem solving, and make sure the problem is actually solved (rule 9). Most of it is common sense, but it doesn’t hurt to see it distilled. And based on the war stories, it’s easy to get wrong. Of potential use to non-developers: there’s a chapter on applying the 9 rules from the Help Desk, when you can't observe directly.

Interestingly, one of his war stories was kind of mentioned in...

Write Portable Code by Brian Hook. I’d had some dealings with Brian when I was at GameHouse, so I knew he knew his stuff. This book too was largely review (I’ve had to deal with getting code to run on different processors and compilers), but again it’s nice to have things spelled out sometimes. And I’d never heard of compile-time asserts or #pragma STDC before. Some of it’s a bit dated (version control in particular — and it must have been written right before the Mac Intel transition), but much of it is stuff you’d still have to deal with when moving between Mac and Windows — or even Mac and iOS. (Scalability is one aspect of portability.)

High-Bandwidth Sneakernet

2010-12-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

I love the plan to deal with the huge amounts of data expected from a proposed black hole imaging project. Each station will create about 22 terabytes of raw data per day. “No imaginable link from remote mountaintops permits live telemetry of such a torrent. Astronomers will physically pull eight-pack cartridges of disk drives from the data recorders. ‘We’ll mail them,’ says Doelman. ‘You can’t beat the bandwidth of a 747 packed with hard drives.’”

iPad Data Gotcha

2010-12-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

Just spent way too much time on the phone with AT&T. I haven’t completely resolved problems I was having with cellular access for my iPad, but I can give a warning: be 100% sure your email address is correct.

If it’s not, you won’t be able to log in again (since it’s your account name). And you won’t be able to retrieve a lost password, even with the web form that asks for IMEI and ICCID, because it’s sent to the wrong address. Nor can AT&T change it for you. And you won’t be able to stop automatic billing.

The whole idea of having plans that purport to be by the month, but expire, seems pretty lame, and is ultimately responsible for my problems. But that’s perhaps the topic of another post.

Predecessor to DiceBook

2010-08-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

I had a reason to open up my Newton, and realized that I had written a dice roller for that platform. No PDF viewing, but it provided simplicity and easy configuration. (I apologize for the poor photograph — I can’t remember how to take a screen capture from the device.)

I don’t remember if this was ever distributed — there certainly wasn’t an App Store in those days!

DiceBook Now Available for iPad

2010-07-29T16:53:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note that I’ve finally gotten through the App Store approval process, and the ~4 hour wait to have the app show up in the store…

DiceBook is a specialized PDF reader that includes a flexible dice roller. It’s designed to be used with rolepaying games (like Dungeons & Dragons, HeroQuest, or Spirit of the Century). You can make dice rolls without leaving the app (so it should be useful even when iPad gets fast app switching).

Learn more from the DiceBook web site, or go right to the App Store.

Apple Recycling Redux

2010-06-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

I decided to upgrade my iPad to a model with 3G wireless (so I could access maps in the car if need be), so I was once again able to avail myself of the Apple Recycling Program. This time, I shipped off a Radius color pivoting monitor and another Power computer, both probably dating from 1998. Total shipping weight: 92 pounds. Shipping weight of the iPad: 3.3 pounds (about 1/28 as much).

So if you’re on the fence about getting an iPad, think about it as a great way to clean out your closet!

Is the Future the Past?

2010-06-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

One thing that struck me about John Siracusa’s interesting article on Apple’s language and API future: Apple did a high-level language once before. NewtonScript.

Whenever I see Python or Lua code, I think back to when I was coding in NewtonScript, which had a similar syntax and similar concepts. Here’s a bit of code from the original implementation of Jigami:

regTile := {_proto: pt_Tile, _parent: self, viewBounds: RelBounds(11, 112, 34, 34)};
regTile.edges := pt_Tile.possibleEdges[tileNum];
regTile:CalcEdges();
regTile.symbols := NIL;

There was also a visual design tool, Newton ToolKit (NTK). The combination of a dynamic language, no pointers, and a graphical editor was quite productive. And NewtonScript was good enough to use for all of the system apps. Yes, there was a little C++ code in parts, but a lot of it was probably premature optimization (there was nothing like Shark or Instruments for Newton).

I don’t know what direction Apple is moving, but at the very least it’s an interesting proof of concept for something that works well in a mobile device.

Phishing Is For Phones Now?

2010-06-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

I think I just got a phishing phone call on my cell phone, from 707-703-4722 (though of course caller ID is easy to spoof). I think it was from Cascade Bank about my credit card. Thing is, I don't have one from them (to my knowledge at least). I didn't enter my credit card # when asked…

To make it even more suspicious, it was a computer-synthesized female voice, though they mentioned something about recording the call.

This has never happened to me before, so I reported it to http://phonephishing.info/report/.

WWDC Thoughts

2010-06-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

Others have reported already, and everything except the keynote is covered by nondisclosure. But here are a few random thoughts on Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, held last week in San Francisco.

Apple made it very hard to plan — about 6 weeks notice. Luckily my employer, Rogue Amoeba, was waiting to pounce, because the event sold out in only 8 days.

I’ve been to the conference a number of times (I think my first was 1989), so I knew I’d be getting a t-shirt, and packed accordingly. Except this year they no longer handed out a t-shirt and a bag (sadly I didn’t go last year, when they handed out a slim laptop backpack). This year it was a lightweight jacket. This was actually pretty useful, given the temperature, but meant I had to get my own WWDC shirt so I didn’t stink on Friday.

Oddly, unwashed developer wasn’t something I noticed. I did however have to sit through a session next to someone with bad breath, someone smelling of alcohol (in a 09:00 session), and a smoker.

It was pretty obvious from the event list going in that it was going to be an iPhone-centric show. Apple doesn’t release all the event names until after the keynote, so I had some hopes that there would be a little more Macintosh content. Sadly, there wasn’t. On the other hand, I did manage to get to one session (the last one as it happened) that was directly helpful to my current work on Pulsar.

More surprising was the number of women. There are never a lot (you inevitably hear someone joking about the lines for the men’s toilet and the lack of line for the women’s), but this year seemed worse than I remember. Perhaps I was especially surprised because the very capable programmer I hired to do an iPhone game while at GameHouse was a woman.

Overall numbers seemed bigger than I recalled from 2 years ago as well. I remember lining up for the keynote, but I didn’t remember having to line up for other sessions — and some of these lines snaked around two corners.

I believe the conference cost significantly more this year ($1600), but the amenities seemed cut back. I already mentioned the reduction in attendee premium. There was also no reception, and no espresso bars inside Moscone. And the Beer Bash didn’t serve sushi.

We also got nothing at registration except the jacket and badge. Going paperless seemed reasonable though, because there was a custom application (apparently this was first available last year). It had some usability problems, and crashed relatively often. It was handy to have on both my iPhone and iPad despite that.

Speaking of iPad, this year I decided to try leaving my laptop home and using just an iPad (with Bluetooth keyboard) to take notes. This made it the first year I didn’t have to worry about keeping my battery charged (although several of the session rooms had electrical outlets attached to the seats, a great feature I made use of 2 years ago). I plan on discussing this more in a later post.

All in all, I found the week worthwhile, though I would have liked more on Macintosh.

Apple Recycling Program

2010-04-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

One of the cool things about getting an iPad was that it qualified me for Apple Recycling. I can get rid of two computers, monitors, or printers in a responsible fashion.

I went with some of the biggest and heaviest stuff, which has long been out of service (the computer was one we used on King of Dragon Pass, released in 1999, and the printer was introduced in 1993).

So by buying 2622 cc worth of tablet (by box size), I get rid of 222400 cc worth of obsolete hardware. For free (Apple pays shipping)! Not a bad deal.

iPad Case

2010-04-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

Whenever I get a new portable device, it seems like I have to get a new case.*

I just got an iPad, and while I suspect it will be pretty rugged, putting it in my laptop case seemed like overkill — it rattles around.

After a little online research, I decided on the “iPad Suede Sleeve” from CaseCrown.

And then I didn’t buy it, because their stupid web site makes you register. Hello CaseCrown! I want to buy one item for my one device. Just let me buy the damn thing!

However, I wasn’t able to find another case that I liked any better, so I finally bit the bullet and bought it. Sight unseen, but $20 with free shipping seemed like a good deal.

The case came promptly. It fits pretty well (it could be a little smaller) and seems well made. The sides are padded, though I imagine if I ever drop it, the corners will be what hits. There’s a side pouch, which ought to hold the charger or a paperback book.

I have used it once so far, and wonder if I made a minor mistake in not getting the similar CaseCrown Protective Sleeve, which has a strap. After 5 minutes of walking with the case in my hand, it started to feel heavy. On the other hand, a strap for such a small device seems a bit silly, and this case is small enough to toss in a backpack.

Obviously choice of case is a personal matter, but I recommend this one.

* The only exception has been my iPhone. It fits in my pocket so well that I don’t want to bulk it up with a case.

Proper Names in SCRABBLE?

2010-04-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

Supposedly the UK edition of SCRABBLE will allow proper names.

This seems seriously broken, because there’s really no way to know what’s legal or not.

Yeah, the argument about having to memorize SOWPODS has validity, but what will be the arbiter of what’s legal? More proper names get created all the time. And what languages are you restricting this to? Who’s to know what all the last names in Croatia (or Tonga) are.

Essentially, it will become a word game that has nothing to do with words. To me, those are a lot less fun because they’re totally arbitrary.

Improving iPhone Security

2010-03-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

Since my iPhone has email and a bunch of other sensitive information on it, I’ve always set a passcode. But I’ve always been a bit dubious about the security of a 4-digit code. In fact, one of my coworkers once saw what I entered as we were walking down the street. While I’m not really worried about coworkers, and 10000 possibilities might be enough given there’s an Erase Data option, I still wanted more security — especially once I get an iPad and may have more data on it.

Enter iPhone Configuration Utility. While this has a wide variety of enterprise options, it’s actually easy to make a simple profile.

Download and install the utility (there’s also a Windows version). Launch it, and click “Configuration Profiles” in the left pane. Click “New” in the toolbar. Enter a name and ID in the “General” section, then click “Passcode.” Now you can set up a more secure passcode — more than 4 characters, letters as well as numbers, etc. (You don’t actually choose the passcode here.)

Then attach your iPhone via USB. Click it in the left pane. Click the “Configuration Profile” tab, then click the “Install” button for your new profile. You’ll confirm this on the device.

Now you can set up a passcode as usual, in Settings > General > Passcode Lock.

Now when you unlock the screen, you’ll get a full keyboard instead of a 10-digit pad. Note that you’ll still be able to make emergency calls (911) without unlocking.

Original Artwork from King of Dragon Pass

2010-03-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

My computer game King of Dragon Pass won the award for Best Visual Arts at the second annual Independent Games Festival. I was really proud of this — we consciously went against the grain by creating quality watercolor art, and scanning it. The artists did a great job.

I’ve put a selection of the original watercolor & ink art for sale at daviddunham.etsy.com. I'll be adding more artwork (the game had over 400 illustrations), so if you don’t see something right away, subscribe to the shop RSS feed.

How much data is enough for your iPad?

2010-03-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Wondering about the 3G plans that AT&T will be offering for the Apple iPad? Is 250 MB spread over a month enough?

If you already have an iPhone, you can find out. I just noticed that AT&T has added a “View Past Data Usage” button to their web site. For me, the cheapest data plan would be fine — I must do enough of my networking while connected to a WiFi network.

Weren’t those my pixels?

2010-02-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

As you can see at Microsoft’s Mac blog, Word 2011 will have (counting the menu bar) 8 horizontal strips of controls.

I love portrait displays, and have one, but I often use my laptop without one. And the laptop screen is wide, not tall. This seems like a terrible use of space, when they should be figuring out how to get more of my content visible without scrolling.

They say you gain vertical space compared to Office 2008, so maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t installed that yet!

I’m not even going to discuss visual clutter or whether you can find things — the ribbon may indeed make Word’s vast number of features more approachable.

For contrast, Pages has 5 strips of controls (menu bar, toolbar, format bar, ruler, and stuff at the bottom), and one of those is shared with the horizontal scroll bar so it doesn’t steal vertical space. Yes, there are palettes, but they use space on the side and don’t steal content area from typical documents.

Coders at Work

2010-02-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

I recently read Coders at Work by Peter Seibel. It’s a series of in-depth interviews with 15 noteworthy programmers, including Jamie Zawinski, Guy Steele, Ken Thompson, and Donald Knuth. Topics range from personal questions (“How did you begin programming?”) to occasionally esoteric discussion of computer science.

One thing I was continually struck by: that’s me! I don’t mean I’ve made a major impact on the world of computers, but so many of their attitudes and approaches were the same as mine. Perhaps that’s not surprising — a couple times it’s mentioned that perhaps 2% of the population are true programmers (who really understand and enjoy it), and I’m obviously in that group. And I’ve used some of the same computers (though one of them had a cutting-edge IBM 1620 in his high school, while our 1620 was obsolete and almost impossible to repair). But I don’t know what explains why we’re not fans of brainteaser interviews.

I’m not sure I use print statements to debug quite as often as most of them, though it is something I do often. I hadn’t realized how common it was!

Everyone (except Knuth) was asked whether they had read Knuth. I did read volumes 1 and 3 back in college, but haven’t referred to it more than once or twice since. That puts me about in the middle of the pack.

The book is marred by a few typos and formatting errors (e.g. an entire paragraph in bold), but is attractively set in Gill Sans.

I enjoyed it greatly. It was a nice mix of stories (such as what was going on at Netscape) and computer science (which as a practitioner I’ve gotten away from). Highly recommended to at least 2% of you.

Switching Email

2010-02-12T13:21:00.000-08:00

I just took a couple of steps in the email world: I switched both my server and client.

I blame Apple. They announced iPad, and I’m making sure I’ll be able to fully use it.

For various reasons, I have multiple email accounts. Until now, I’ve been reading some with Apple Mail on my Mac, and also on my iPhone. The accounts are set up to use IMAP, which means mail is on the server (or if you will, the cloud). I can get it anywhere.

But for my oldest accounts, I’d used Eudora as my client, and Eudora Internet Mail Server for the actual server I ran. And I’d set things up with the POP protocol (which is essentially client-centric). This meant that I needed a master device that sucked the messages off the server. I couldn’t retrieve mail from my iPhone, because my laptop was the master owner. And EIMS didn’t support SSL anyway. EIMS also supports IMAP to the standard, and Apple Mail is apparently buggy, and doesn’t play well with EIMS.

I thought about buying a mini with Snow Leopard Server and running mail off it. That would give me the cloud and the security. But it costs $1000. I might have been able to add SSL on top of EIMS, but I’d still be dealing with the mismatch between it and my IMAP client.

What I ended up doing was using Google Apps Standard Edition. I don’t care about the actual apps (Calendar, Chat, Docs), but they do provide what is essentially Gmail for your domain. In my case, domains (since my wife and I get mail at three different domains). Although they push for the Premier Edition ($50/year/user), the free Standard Edition provides domain aliases (so we can handle our three domains via the same site) and nicknames (so I can have app-specific addresses).

Basic setup was easy. I had to prove I owned my domain, which I could do by putting a file on my server. The domain aliases were a bit trickier — Google checks for “domain.com/file” but I’d set up Apache so it was actually at “www.domain.com/file”. There was no error message — and since it’s free, support is only via a forum (which I still haven’t gotten an answer from). But I eventually figured out what was going on. But then, one of the domains took, but the other did not. (After several hours, it finally did.)

Google provides a way to test things, so I created an account on my iPhone and made sure I could send and receive via IMAP.

I don’t do my own DNS so I had to contact my ISP. They threw the switch, and things pretty quickly were working!

While I get no spam on my Gmail account, I get a fair amount to my older addresses (the fact that it’s multiple addresses probably works against me). Google has so far filtered all of this about as well as SpamSieve did on the client side — I get a bunch that’s not blocked by the server, and (being paranoid) go through it for false positives on occasion. (I have gotten two false positives in almost a week.)

On the client side, I had to learn Gmail’s idiosyncratic approach to IMAP. You will need to enable the advanced IMAP controls via Gmail Labs, and expose the labels. Then the important thing, if you want things to look more or less like IMAP, is to ensure that any message has only one label. I had originally used the tagging model, and assigned labels liberally. After all, Google wasn’t duplicating a message in the In folder and the Developer folder. But IMAP (at least as implemented in the Apple client), does.

Luckily, it’s easy to set up your filters so that an incoming message that’s filtered skips the inbox. At this point, the IMAP client can move things between folders, and the right thing happens. Well, you’ll probably want to read Google’s documentation on how to set up for IMAP, since some of the system folders should be set up in a less intuitive way.

So far I’m pretty happy with this. As far as I can tell, it’s been totally transparent — I still get and send email with the same addresses. I can get mail via IMAP or the Web-based Gmail interface. And I’ll no longer need to administer my own server (as easy as that was with EIMS).

Diaspora Campaign

2010-02-10T22:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve been intrigued by the RPG Diaspora, a grittier take on FATE than the pulp Spirit of the Century. I began running a game earlier this year. Material from the campaign is now on my web site, including the cluster the players created in the first session, characters, and Rob Helm’s writeups of the next two sessions.

At some point I want to write up a review of the game, but in general I’m pretty happy with this version of the FATE rule system. The authors obviously began with Spirit of the Century, but tuned it for a more realistic feel, which also happens to play faster. A number of areas have been streamlined. I do have a nagging suspicion that had I not seen Spirit of the Century first, the rules would have been a big confusing.

Super Bowl 44 Ads

2010-02-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Elise and I watched mostly for the ads (since we didn’t have any attachment to the teams). I think my favorite was probably Google’s: a short story, told entirely with words (there was a map but it was just an illustration; so were the sound effects). Who would have thought?

And we both hate talking babies. Boo, E*TRADE.

Leaving GameHouse

2010-02-01T22:16:00.001-08:00

After nearly 8 years creating casual games at GameHouse Studios, I’ve decided it’s time for a change. Thanks to Mike Ash’s blog, I stumbled into an opportunity to work on Mac applications from home. I’ve worked out of my house for about half my career, so I know I can handle the different work conditions.

I’ll definitely miss GameHouse, and all the people I worked with there. I’m staying until the end of the month, to help get our next game out the door.

A Pun Generator

2010-01-03T18:39:00.000-08:00

Back in the 1980s, my grandfather kept asking me when I was going to go for my PhD. I never did (and probably never will), but at the time I thought I might, and figured that my thesis would have something to do with puns. After all, lots of artificial intelligence research was involved with disambiguation. Why not turn that on its end, and revel in ambiguity!

It turns out that a team at the University of Aberdeen have created the Joking Computer. It basically creates puns: “Q: What kind of tree is nauseated? A: A sick-amore.”

So I’d probably need a new thesis…

iPhone Developer Booted Over Fishy Reviews

2009-12-07T21:25:00.000-08:00

Looks like someone got caught cheating with App Store reviews, and Apple pulled their 1000 apps! Everyone tries to game the system, but most of us work within the rules (and not just the official rules, but also the rules of decency). I’m pleased to see Apple take this step (even if they didn’t do so proactively), which makes things more fair for the rest of us.

Game as Art

2009-12-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

There’s a lot of art that’s powerful and moving and you really want to experience, but would never hang in our living room. Brenda Brathwaite’s Train is such a work, but it’s a board game. I haven’t played it, but it seems like it would be cathartic in the sense that Aristotle used in his Poetics.

Improved UK Plug

2009-12-05T11:16:00.000-08:00

Clever folding design — looks a lot more appropriate to have in your laptop bag!

Jigami Is Available!

2009-11-29T21:43:00.000-08:00

I had set release for 30 November, and figured that was local time (since this evening I could tell that the app was available in Australia but not here in Seattle). But as of about 20:00 PST, Jigami is available in the App Store! If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, check it out! Players of the original Newton version were asking for this, so you know it’s addictive.

App Store Approval

2009-11-29T19:50:00.000-08:00

The Jigami approval process went pretty smoothly. I submitted my final binary on Monday night, 16 November. The following Monday morning, 23 November, it was “In Review.” And on Wednesday afternoon, 25 November, it was “Ready for Sale.”

I didn’t want to release it right before Thanksgiving (and before I had my marketing ready), so I’d set the availability for 30 November. In parts of the world, it’s already on sale!

Obviously I’d prefer it if it didn’t take 8 business days to approve a board game, but Apple did live up to the “within 14 days,” and didn’t come up with a reason to reject it.

So for me, the approval process is not ideal, but is working.

Jigami History

2009-11-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

At long last, I wrapped up my first iPhone application, Jigami!

Looking at my notebook, the earliest record of it I can find is from 10 December 1991. I had apparently done a Mac prototype by February 1992, and continued to refine it (the next version I saved is from February 1993).

I took about 3 days to port it to NewtonScript in August 1993, and then Scott Shwarts and I polished it. As near as I can tell, we finished it in December 1993. Apple briefly published it as Jigsaw Strategy Game, but then decided they didn’t want to be in the game business, and we got the rights back and distributed it ourselves for a while.

The game was always intended for a handheld device, and in October 2008 I started an iPhone version. I got it working, but the UI wasn’t quite right. The original Newton version used a stylus, so you simply touched a piece and moved it directly. But doing the same thing with your finger meant you couldn’t see the piece you were moving. This is pretty important, since you need to see the shape and symbols. It took me a while to finally accept that the piece had to be moved out from under your finger. Suddenly the game became fun again.

I thought it would be cool to rotate with a gesture, and managed to get this working. But it nobody liked it, even though you could rotate by any amount (±270°). So I implemented a second tap. Everyone preferred this, even though rotating could now take up to 3 taps.

Autorotation was suggested by someone at the Casual Connect conference (sorry, I don’t remember who to credit).

The game was now better than the Newton version, but it still needed a lot more polish. I put in two more AI levels and a bunch of animation. Finally, I got Dalton Webb to do professional artwork. (You can see some of the art progress at the A Sharp Facebook page.)

The original game was available in English, French, German, and Japanese. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just use the original text, because minor things had changed. I didn’t get all of those in the first release, but Laurent Aillet gave me a French translation, and I hope to get more.

I actually submitted the game to the App Store last night, but one of my testers just sent me a crash log and I was able to figure out that it was not the crash I had fixed. Although it seemed to happen only on 2.2 devices (which are a definite minority), I thought it was worth getting right. So I rejected the binary, fixed the bug, and resubmitted it.

That puts me back at the end of the queue, but the silver lining is that I was able to submit French keywords (I had forgotten to get them localized). This is one piece of metadata that Apple doesn’t let you change at will.

Hopefully I’ll have the end of the story in a few days: release. Well, really it will be a new beginning, since I have a number of updates planned…

6 Different Beers

2009-10-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

For my birthday, I got some beers I don’t usually drink (thank you Dav), so I thought I’d mention them.

I opened the Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale with trepidation, but it had no pumpkin flavor I could detect (though they say it’s brewed with pumpkin and pumpkin seeds), only somewhat subtle pumpkin pie spices. Alcohol content was 5.9%. Overall, I’d say it was mild.

By contrast, drinking Sam’l Smith organic cherry fruit ale really seemed more like drinking cherry juice than beer. I didn’t notice the alcohol going down, though I guess it was there (no percentage was listed). Nice and fruity, rather than the uneasy mix that flavored beers often are.

I expected Lip Stinger (from McTarnahan’s) to be spicy, since it was “fermented with peppercorn.” Apparently they meant the singular — I could detect no pepper. It was just a beer. Alcohol content was 4.8%.

Fat Scotch Ale from Silvery City Brewery was just what I expected: scotch ale. I’m not sure what makes it that way — “a touch of peat character” I suppose. Alcohol content was 9%, which is probably also what makes it taste like what I expected.

Elysian’s The Immortal IPA was a nice India pale ale, definitely hoppy. 6.3% alcohol content.

Bear Republic’s Hop Rod Rye was slightly bitter but not at all unpleasant. 8% alcohol content.

So what was my favorite? Probably Fat Scotch Ale, as the most distinctive. And Lip Stinger seemed oddly lacking in character.

Previewing Jigami

2009-10-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

I put a more official announcement here (with info on becoming a beta tester), but I am bringing my first published game (Apple called it Jigsaw Strategy Game when they briefly published it for Newton) to iPhone (and iPod touch). The game was intended to be played on a handheld, and take only a few minutes to play, so I think it should work pretty well on iPhone. Of course, it will need a little updating from the black & white original pictured here. I’ll be posting more about that in the future.

Open Project in Xcode

2009-10-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

One really nice feature (not sure if it’s new in 3.2 or if I hadn’t noticed it before) is how you can look at sample code.

API documentation has a link to sample code that uses the call. Click that link, and from the sample code page, click “Open Project in Xcode.” The project is downloaded and, well, opens in Xcode. Very nice integration.

Update to Opal

2009-10-14T10:55:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned, I am using the new clang compiler and LLVM back end in the latest update (version 1.2.5) to my Opal outliner. I couldn’t really detect any differences in performance, but I’ll take the faster compiles!

The clang code analyzer did find a number of minor memory leaks, mostly in things that are less common, like printing or using the bookmark popup. So this release is cleaner than ever.

A Retro Future?

2009-10-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

I guess each generation is going to use technology differently, but it seems odd that my granddaughters prefer using MySpace to contact people, rather than e-mail *. This means they can only contact people who are on MySpace — for example, excluding me. It reminds me of the old days, when my editor set me up with an MCI Mail account so I could contact him. And most of my contacts were on CompuServe. It was a huge day when the services finally started sending e-mail to each other (and even longer before everyone got standardized into the name@domain addresses).

I hope we don’t go back to the old days!

* My granddaughters do use SMS, but due to its cost structure, text messages aren’t really a universal medium.

There’s a twist

2009-10-09T10:46:00.001-07:00

Even though I’m happy enough with iTunes, I wanted to check out doubleTwist. But they have a huge barrier to entry: when you launch the application on your computer, you need to create an account.

That almost made me quit right there, but I decided to check out the fine print, as per the links in the dialog.

Oops, they made the whole thing the check box! When you click the blue text, it doesn’t show you the Privacy Policy, it activates the check.

And when I want to the web site to post a question about this, they wanted me to register first.

So much for doubleTwist. I’m not giving someone my e-mail without knowing more.

Addendum: Apparently Help > Contact Support uses regular e-mail, so there is at least a standard way to contact them.

Opt out of Omniture Tracking

2009-09-21T11:13:00.001-07:00

Omniture is a major web tracking company, which is being bought by Adobe. They use the domain “2o7.net” which some people consider pretty sneaky (in particular, because in this font it looks a lot like “207.net” — they use two-oh-seven but it looks like two-zero-seven). If you don’t like the idea of being tracked, follow the link at the end of their Privacy page to set a cookie.

NSUserDefaults Is Picky

2009-09-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

If you’re not programming Mac or iPhone, you might want to skip this post…

I’m saving some state in an array, to be saved via NSUserDefaults. I know that NSArray can’t contain a nil value, but you can instead use [NSNull null]. BUT, property lists save only a limited number of classes, and NSNull is not one of them.

The confusing thing was that NSUserDefaults silently rejected an entire NSDictionary containing an NSArray containing an NSNull, while saving all the other changes I was making. So my testing showed that saving and restoring worked. And worked. And worked. Until the one case where there happened to be a nil. And then loading used the previous state.

So I had to come up with another way to save and restore a C array that can contain a nil. (In this case I was able to use a string.)

Jukebox in the Sky

2009-09-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

For as long as I recall, RealNetworks has called its Rhapsody service a “jukebox in the sky.” These days it’s probably trendy to say it’s your music library in the cloud. The idea is that you pay a monthly fee, and have access to any music you want, wherever you go.

Now that there’s Rhapsody for iPhone, this is finally coming true.

Since I have a Rhapsody account from work, I downloaded the app as soon as it was available, and tried using it to replace the iPod feature of my iPhone 3GS. Searching was straightforward, so I queued up a bunch of music and headed towards the bus stop. That meant I was leaving WiFi for a 3G signal and the song stopped and restarted. And stopped and didn’t restart. Then Rhapsody crashed.

But later attempts worked totally fine. There was one momentary pause, but then the music resumed. And I was able to search and queue up more music while on the bus.

There are still some issues with the software. Rhapsody gave me a “My Music” list that is not my music at all (maybe new accounts don’t get saddled with this). Queuing music is awkward (be sure to press rather than tap if want to actually queue — which I always do — rather than play instantly). And Rhapsody can’t access some hardware features (like the extremely important pause button on the remote) or play in the background.

Is the jukebox in the sky worth $13/month (plus tax), given you’re renting music and have nothing if you end the subscription? I certainly think it’s more worthwhile now that you’re not tethered to a computer, or have to pre-load a crappy player like a Sansa. A touch device with no remote is a pretty crappy player too, though it makes a big difference to be able to manage things on the fly. And it was very cool to pick a song I’d never heard and immediately get to listen to it.

So I think it’s finally worth trying — you can get a 14 day free trial, and the iPhone app is free.

The Real Difference Between Mac and Windows Programmers

2009-09-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

It’s obviously the color of their tools. Leon Bambrick points out that Windows tools are orange. But mine are blue. (OK, you could argue Interface Builder has a little orange. At least there’s an X in Xcode, which I constantly have open…)

(Thanks to Raymond Chen for the link.)

Clang Is Fast

2009-09-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

As I’ve written, the developer tools in Snow Leopard are a great reason to upgrade.

Snow Leopard includes a new compiler, clang. Much of my work involves C++, which clang can’t handle. Which is a bummer, as the static analysis is so useful. But Opal is an Objective-C application, so I tried switching from GCC 4.2. I had to tweak a few things (clang doesn’t like the GCC -Wunreachable-code option), but mostly it gave a few different warnings.

And it’s about twice as fast. On my MacBook Air 2.13 GHz, it took GCC about 58 seconds to build Opal (with its plugins). Clang took about 32 seconds. (This isn’t all compile time — it also includes copying files into the bundle.) I built twice each time in case caching made a difference.

Opal isn’t very compute-bound, so I didn’t notice any speed differences from using the LLVM backend. As for code size, the bundle is 4,463,702 bytes, compared to 4,328,838 from GCC 4.2 and 4,349,342 from GCC 4.0. In many cases, bigger code runs slower, but Apple claims that LLVM generates better code. They pay a lot of attention to performance, so I’m going to believe them on this.

So I’m planning on using clang for the next Opal update.

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

2009-09-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

Interesting article by Paul Krugman in the New York Times. But the icing on the cake (and why I’m mentioning it) is that it’s illustrated by Jason Lutes, who did a lot of pencil work on King of Dragon Pass!

Seattle Public Library in CardStar

2009-09-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite iPhone apps is CardStar, which lets you put the cards for all those loyalty programs (like the local supermarket) in your phone rather than have to carry around bits of plastic. It displays the barcodes, and the store can scan them. (Most of the time with the hand scanner they use for large items, though you can hand them your phone to pass over the surface scanner.)

It also works with library cards. For the Seattle Public Library, use Codabar AA.

Snow Leopard Notes

2009-09-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve been using Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) since official release. See John Siracusa for a very thorough and technical review. I just want to post a few random notes.

I forgot to be scientific about measuring the disk space savings, but I think I got 5 GB back (and I had never installed all the printer drivers). That’s a pretty valuable upgrade right there!

While people have noted it’s a plus that you can now show the date in the menu bar, in fact you don’t get to choose the date format, so it’s not very useful.

It’s pretty cool that Cisco VPN is now built in — the client from Cisco was pretty unreliable. Unfortunately, we use a shared secret that’s only distributed via a .pcf file, in encrypted form. Luckily, there’s a security hole and it’s possible to retrieve the plaintext password. Armed with this, I can use the Snow Leopard client.

I haven’t seen mention of a change in Time Machine: if you back up to a Time Capsule, you’re no longer saving to the top level of the volume but rather using your own account. (The screen shot shows the new approach above the old.) This should make things a little more secure, but it also means your old backup is ignored, and things start from scratch. (I couldn’t really verify Apple’s claims that the initial backup is a lot faster — it still seemed awfully slow over USB Ethernet.) On the other hand, I had to restart the initial backup since I didn’t have enough space for an entire new backup. Once I freed up space, the initial scan was pretty much instant.

So far, most of my software has been compatible (including those I wrote: Addressix and Opal). I was using an older version of Parallels Desktop, which for some reason was not moved to an “Incompatible” folder but won’t launch (with a message that it’s incompatible). I think I’ll be switching to VMWare Fusion.

While there are some features that I appreciate (minimizing windows to the application icon instead of cluttering the Dock), for the most part it’s the same Mac, slightly improved.

Except as a development machine. The new version of Xcode offers some significant improvements for developers, ranging from better Subversion support to new compilers. I’m still in the process of using clang and the updated Instruments to track down subtle issues.

At the same time, one of the most annoying bugs is in the new developer tools: we can no longer use distcc to compile on 8 different machines simultaneously. Apple is aware of the problem.

As a user, it’s not a whizzy update, but I think still worth it. As a developer, I’m really happy to be using the new tools. I’m also hoping that this becomes the new baseline — it would be great to develop for 10.6+ rather than 10.4+.

Drama vs Real Life

2009-09-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Derek Sivers summarizes Kurt Vonnegut on drama. With charts (but no chartjunk).

Chartjunk

2009-08-21T18:39:00.001-07:00

Interesting blog about bad charts: Junk Charts.

This is obviously inspired by “chartjunk,” from Edward Tufte’s classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. If for some reason you’re not familiar with this book, go read it! There’s tons of useful advice on how to present numbers so they can be understood.

Dogfooding

2009-08-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

Raymond Chen often writes about Microspeak — jargon that shows up at Microsoft.

I hadn’t realized that “dogfooding” was now a verb (though Wikipedia concurs), but the usage in the Office 2010 Engineering blog just seems wrong. “For those of you who are dogfooding the Technical Preview build, thanks for all of the great feedback you’ve sent us.” But, the phrase is actually “Eating one's own dog food!” It does not mean beta testing! The author of the blog may be dogfooding, but those in the blog’s audience presumably do not work in the Office 2010 group. I imagine they are actually users of the Technical Preview. They are not eating their own dogfood. They are eating the blog author’s dogfood. This may or may not need a colorful term, but it would need to be a different term.

When I use Opal, I am eating my own dogfood (because I’m the developer). But the people who help me test prerelease versions are not.

Take Back the Beep

2009-08-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

David Pogue writes of the nuisance voice mail prompts the cell phone companies have inflicted on us in order to increase airtime usage. I run into it most often calling my wife, who has a Sprint phone. Luckily they have posted how to disable the prompt I hear, thanks to Pogue’s campaign:

“To turn off caller instructions aka "TAKE BACK THE BEEP"

“Dial into your voicemail accout (sic), select 3 for personal options, select 2 for greetings, select 1 for main greeting, select 3 for add or remove caller instructions, then press 2 for do not play instructions.”

(Of note: Apple wouldn’t let AT&T inflict this on iPhone accounts.)

Pogue now has a followup to his first column.

Less Flash!

2009-07-20T20:11:00.000-07:00

I’d been using Click to Flash for some time, but didn’t realize there has been a lot of improvement (I think I had version 1.0, and it’s now up to 1.4.2).

Click To Flash is a simple plug-in for Safari that handles all Flash content — by not playing it until you click. This means you can visit web sites without running a handful of programs masquerading as ads. The problem is that many (if not most) Flash apps are extremely greedy in their use of the processor. This means the computer heats up, which means the fan runs louder. In fact, Elise’s machine appears to heat up to the point that it abruptly shuts down to prevent damage. And if you’re running on batteries, you run down the charge faster. Click To Flash simply shows the word “Flash” instead of running the app.

But what if you want to actually play a Flash game? That’s where the “Click to” comes in. Click on the blocked Flash content and it loads and runs.

Like I said, I had an older version that was functional, but doesn’t offer the ease of use for white listing sites, or a number of tweaks (such as using H.264 video on YouTube). I don’t know how I missed the update. You shouldn’t.

The Intention-Behavior Gap

2009-07-06T18:06:00.000-07:00

I remember telling my friend Al Tommervik I had a great idea for a game, and him replying that he didn’t want to hear it, otherwise I’d be less likely to complete it. (This was a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure the game was one I did end up completing perhaps 10 years later: King of Dragon Pass.)

I’ve always appreciated that advice, and it’s one reason I don’t talk a whole lot about software I have in development. I just learned that there’s research that shows that people who don’t announce their goals are more likely to achieve them. According to an abstract of four recent studies, “intentions that had been noticed by other people were translated into action less intensively than those that had been ignored.”

So unless something is imminent, I won’t be mentioning it here, as fun as it might be.

iPhone App Store

2009-07-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

Digging through some old notes, I found this link:

According to Anita Hamilton in Time, Apple’s upcoming App Store will be “anything but a bargain.”

She wrote that in July 2008, and since then the App Store has obviously turned out to be an amazing bargain. Seems like almost all apps are $0.99 or free, which is kind of a shame (since I’d like to sell apps). I’m still hoping Apple figures out a way that premium games can sell for a premium price. Right now there’s no differentiation in the App Store. I do see a few of the top 100 paid apps at $4.99 or higher, but most of those are associated with an existing brand (Sims 3, Tiger Woods, Tetris). Games that sell for $19.99 on Windows or Mac are just $0.99 on iPhone (Sally’s Salon).

As others have written, it’s because the easiest way to market on the App Store is to price yourself less than others. I’m not a marketer, but it seems like this is exactly the opposite of the way Apple operates. They sell better than average products for a price that reflects their value.

HeroQuest 2nd Edition Now Shipping!

2009-06-30T16:55:00.000-07:00

HeroQuest Core Rules are now available for sale as a physical book or PDF! We were able to clean up a few production problems that were in the Tentacles prerelease, so this is the best edition ever. If you’re at all interested in roleplaying games, check it out! “Anything you can imagine, you can play…”

iPhone 3GS

2009-06-29T04:44:00.000-07:00

As I hinted before, I upgraded my original iPhone to an iPhone 3Gs. Apple made it real convenient, shipping it to arrive on the day of release, so I didn’t have to wait in line like 2 years ago.

Since I’d already upgraded the software to 3.0, some of the changes weren’t quite as dramatic as they might have been (frex I already had Spotlight search). But overall, I’m pleased with the new phone.

Although some people said the 3G was too slippery, I haven’t yet found it that way, and I’m still carrying it with no case. The curved back definitely feels different in my pocket though.

The oleophobic screen really does seem to make a difference — it gets less dirty and is easier to clean.

One unexpected plus is the new earbud remote. It’s now possible to change volume without pulling out the phone. (It had already been easy, since the volume button is easily located by feel.) Also, you can start music just from the remote — with my old iPhone, I had to first wake the device.

Speaking of volume, this phone is a lot louder than the 2007 model.

The GPS and compass are nice, though their accuracy doesn’t seem quite as great as I had expected. While sometimes I’ve seen it accurately track me as I walked down a sidewalk, it put me on the opposite corner of a downtown intersection.

Web browsing is a lot faster. It’s harder to tell the difference with other applications, though one that always crashed (Glyder) no longer does — presumably the extra RAM makes a difference here.

So far, I’ve gotten a 3G signal almost all the time. It took over a week before I saw my first EDGE symbol.

I have had some problems with it attaching to my AirPort — when it wakes it sees the base station, but doesn’t use it. (After a few minutes it does, and I’ve got an open bug with Apple I need to gather more data for.)

Basically, it’s an incremental improvement over the original. And for me, enough of an improvement to be worth it.

I’m not pleased that AT&T is going to charge me more for 3G, and that the basic plan no longer includes text messages.

Review of Opal

2009-06-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Nicely detailed review of my Opal outliner at The Mac OS X Guru. He concludes, “It is fast, extremely responsive and very intuitive.”

Xcode comments

2009-06-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

I knew that if you specified certain strings in comments, Xcode would put an entry in the function popup. But I just discovered there were some I didn't know about. Here’s the ones I now know of:

// TODO: 

// FIXME: 

// ???: 

// !!!:

// MARK:

Mouse Repair

2009-06-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

I had an Apple Mighty Mouse whose scroll ball stopped working in one direction — I could scroll down but not up (or the other way around, can’t recall). I happened to have a spare, and used it for a fair while. But then it stopped working in one direction!

Desperate, I decided to push the scroll ball button (which I never use). When I did so, I could scroll both directions. I got out the old mouse and did the same, and it too now works. It happens to have a shorter cable, which I preferred, so I’m now back in operation.

iPhone Release Swamps Yahoo?

2009-06-19T16:42:00.000-07:00

Apparently there were some problems with AT&T activation when the iPhone 3G S went on sale today. (It took about half an hour to complete when I did mine.) But what I haven’t heard anything about is that apparently the Stocks and Weather applications don’t work — I haven’t done a big survey, but two other people (who didn’t upgrade) were unable to access them. And I couldn’t on either the new or old iPhone. What both have in common is that they connect to Yahoo:

I managed to connect once, but now it’s failing again.

New MacBook Air

2009-06-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

I upgraded my original MacBook Air (1.8 GHz, 80 GB hard disk) to the latest model (2.16 GHz, 128 GB solid state disk). I was happy with the old one most of the time, but sometimes it felt too slow.

I’ve only been using the new machine for about 3 days (and on vacation, so not at all heavily), but so far so good. The Xbench rating for the old machine was 54.2, the new one 144.88. I’ll have to do some real world tests once I’m home, but if it’s really almost 3 times as fast, I’m happy.

Facebook ID

2009-06-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

I’m now http://www.facebook.com/ddunham on Facebook. If that matters…

Fixing the Safari 4 toolbar

2009-06-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

Safari 4.0 comes configured (on the Mac at least) with a toolbar that incorporates the seldom-used Add Bookmark button with the Address field. And there’s no apparent way to turn it off via View > Customize Toolbar — there’s no Address Field item without Add Bookmark attached.

There is, however, a separate Add Bookmark item. To get rid of Add Bookmark, you need to drag in the separate item (which makes it disappear from its attached position), and then remove it from the toolbar.

(I had filed a bug against the beta build for this limitation; I don’t know if the workaround existed because I didn’t think of it until the final release.)

Gladwell on Basketball (and defeating Goliath)

2009-05-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell’s topics, and his latest New Yorker article “How David Beats Goliath” is no exception.

I think it also explains why I don’t find basketball as interesting as say hockey. Only half the time is spent doing something interesting — the game is played on about 48 feet of a 94 foot court.

RPG Technology

2009-05-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

Ran into an interesting post "10 Useful Pieces of Gaming Technology" and just had to call out the Abulafia Random Generators. These sorts of tables are always fun (where else would you learn that Bruce Schneier once factored a prime number?), and often quite useful to spark creativity.

HeroQuest blog

2009-05-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

Moon Design has started a blog in support of their HeroQuest line. It’s a good place to read about release schedules (the worldwide release of HeroQuest is July), upcoming products, and designer notes. I’ve been writing some of the latter.

HeroQuest 2nd Edition

2009-04-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

The paper & dice roleplaying game I was project manager for is finally nearing release: the second edition of Robin Laws’s HeroQuest. It’s due to be released in June.

I’ve run lengthy campaigns with this edition and the previous, and find this version to be even more flexible and easy to run than the last. It gives you plenty of tools to run games that follow a dramatic flow. My players all found it easier as well, but lost none of HeroQuest’s flexibility.

HeroQuest is now generic — suitable for running games in any genre. (Previous games were tied to Glorantha, so you needed to do a little adaptation if you wanted a different setting.) But Glorantha fans take heart — I’ve also been helping edit The Sartar Book, which has rules for Orlanthi magic and plenty of information on the inhabitants of Dragon Pass in general and Sartar in particular. It also includes an epic campaign suitable for characters of any level (though I recommend a little player experience). The Sartar Book is still in the editing phase, but while you’re waiting, Glorantha fans can use the appendix in HeroQuest to play (though you’ll have to provide your own cultures and scenarios).

I’m perhaps biased, but I really like the new HeroQuest rules, and The Sartar Book is shaping up to be pretty darn good as well.

Apple Keyboard

2009-03-18T13:35:00.001-07:00

I think I’ve requested a rationally sized keyboard several times over the years, so when Apple finally came out with one, I figured I needed to put my money where my mouth is, and buy one.

I plugged it into a KVM, and it works fine (typing on either a 20 inch aluminum iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.6, or a G5 tower running 10.4.11).

As with my MacBook Air, I missed the Enter key. So I installed KeyRemap4MacBook. Despite the name, it works fine with the Apple Keyboard as well as the MacBook Air.

The only problem was that for some reason, I wanted to put my right hand too far to the left —apparently I’m too used to positioning it away from the right side of the keyboard.

It’s really nice having all that desk space back!

Small At Last!

2009-03-03T09:44:00.001-08:00

Hallelujah! Apple is once again offering a keyboard that doesn’t take up excess space on your desktop, and will work without draining batteries!

Welcome to the Anti-Social

2009-02-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

So I was on the bus today, and noticed someone was flipping through something on his iPhone. Turned out it was his playlists. And once he picked a song, I could easily see which album it was from, because of the album cover (easy to recognize because I too have some Vampire Weekend on my iPhone).

To me that’s just as valid a music sharing experience as whatever the Zune is supposed to do. And we didn’t even have to cooperate.

Mac Box Set & Leopard

2009-01-30T21:47:00.000-08:00

Just got my Mac Box Set (Mac OS X, iLife and iWork). At $149 (Amazon price as of 30 Jan), it’s the same price as iLife and iWork bought separately. I wanted both of those.

As it happened, I used the Mac OS X DVD to update a machine to 10.5.6, and tried to use that computer as part of my compile farm (using Xcode’s Distributed Build feature). It showed up as incompatible with the others. Apparently Mac Box Set includes 9G66, while the combo update installs 9G55. I didn’t realize Apple was distributing multiple builds of 10.5.6. Normally no one would really care, but distributed builds need perfect configuration matches.

So I probably won’t be able to use this machine in my compile farm until the next Mac OS X update.

Control Room

2009-01-25T12:51:00.001-08:00

Just watched the documentary Control Room, about Al Jazeera during the invasion of Iraq. Poor Al Jazeera! They were hated by both sides, as near as I could tell because they were devoted to broadcasting the truth.

The movie was for me full of ambiguities. For example, the soldiers going door to door (pretty scary stuff from my own training) vs the poor civilians caught in this. The soldiers trying to control the civilians without being able to speak their language vs the poor civilians who had no idea what they were being told. The reporters wanting information, the military not wanting to give out something useful to their enemy.

I found 1Lt Josh Rushing very sympathetic (perhaps because I was once a 1Lt). He seemed to be honestly trying to understand the Arab point of view. And was keenly aware that he reacted to dead Americans on TV differently than to dead Iraqis.

The DVD includes deleted scenes. I didn’t watch all, but many were political discussions that may be enlightening but didn’t really relate to the main theme of the film.

An interesting and thought-provoking documentary, still relevant.

Class Names under gcc

2009-01-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

We recently changed our C++ framework to use the language’s RTTI (historically we didn’t because some compilers didn’t do a good job with it, but that’s pretty ancient history by now). Previously we used a bunch of macros to roll our own, including the ability to print an object’s class (for debugging purposes), something like “ResourceImage.” The first cut at “native” support showed this as “N3GF213ResourceImageE,” which is too ugly for my liking. (It’s essentially a mangled name.)

So Chris Blackwell pointed me in the right direction, and we now have

#include <cxxabi.h>

template <typename ObjType> std::string class_name(ObjType* anObject)
{
int  status;
char  *realName;
realName = abi::__cxa_demangle(typeid(*anObject).name(), 0, 0, &status);
std::string retVal(realName);
free(realName);
return retVal;
}

which returns a human-readable name.

I’m Finally Digital

2008-11-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

TV, that is… I don’t watch much TV, but for at least two years I’ve been eying the impending switch to digital broadcast. I don’t feel like paying $35/month for cable, so it seemed like upgrading my TV was the way to go (rather than paying for a converter — even with the coupon). We’re using a 19 inch model we inherited (the 19 inch model I bought in 1980 is essentially a spare). So it seemed like I could kill two birds with one stone — upgrade to HDTV, and switch to digital.

But two years ago this would have cost about $1200 for a 32 inch model. This year, I was able to find a Black Friday special model for $499: a Samsung LN32A300. Everyone had them for the same price, so I want to a local store (Magnolia Audio/Video).

I was really amazed at how much better the picture is. Hooking up the same rabbit ear antenna we used before, the picture is now totally sharp, where most of the channels were rather fuzzy before. Even the VCR looks a lot better (no doubt because it’s now connected via video instead of RF on channel 2).

Elise tried getting a new antenna with an amplifier, but this actually made things worse (one channel would cut off with the amplifier on), so she returned it.

The remote seems reasonably well designed (though it doesn’t light up), and the menu system is quite usable.

I haven’t tried hooking up a computer yet (need to track down a reasonably priced DVI/HDMI cable), but I’m sure I will at some point.

So we now have more channels (many of the stations apparently have a second or even third signal, though I’m not entirely sure what they use it for), about twice the screen size (by area), and no longer have to futz with the antenna to get an OK picture. I’m surprised at how pleased I am.

Pandora on iPhone

2008-11-21T18:58:00.000-08:00

Due to an upgrade glitch, I didn’t have any music on my iPhone for the half hour bus ride home. So I decided to use Pandora Radio.

Even though I had only an EDGE connection, the experience was fine. The app did take a while to start up and play the first song, but then I just listened to music. Some of which I already own, some that I think was new to me. But all worth listening to, and all free. And I didn’t hear any “buffering” style pauses — just continuous music. (There were apparently ads, but only on screen.)

Pandora Radio is not built in like the iPod application, so you can’t do anything else while it’s running, but I didn’t need to.

It’s worth getting this, and spending a little time customizing it so it can recommend music (I had originally done this a Macintosh using their online service — your account is available from any device).

I Voted For President!

2008-11-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life, I have voted for a president! (I’ve always voted, but my candidate had never won.)

Life Without Walls

2008-10-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

Microsoft’s new ad campaign is “Windows: Life Without Walls.”

But if we don’t have walls, why do we need windows?

Voting Machine Problems Redux

2008-10-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

Hey, sometimes the errors do benefit Democrats!

In some ways, the more failures the better, so we can get rid of some of the bad technology being used. Though of course votes being miscounted in any direction is bad, and it’s not clear that we’d get something more resistant to fraud than what’s currently out there.

Fund Raising Tricks

2008-10-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

According to the New York Times, “Mr. McCain is now taking public financing for the general election, but he has continued to raise money through his joint fund-raising committees, something that frustrates campaign finance watchdogs, because they argue that a goal of public financing is to get candidates out of the private money-raising business.”

I just got a request from McCain-Palin Victory 2008, which is apparently a joint fund-raising committee; they’re asking for up to $5000 (which is well above the normal $2300 limit). So you don’t have to take the word of the NYT.

Say what you want about money and elections (and I tend to go with the Freakonomics idea that contributions reflect appeal rather than greatly influencing elections — certainly the fact that Obama is getting many small donations is significant), you can’t both condemn your opponent for not using the funding-limited public financing, and then also find a loophole to raise your own money. As far as I’m concerned, a letter with McCain’s signature asking for money is no different from a letter from Obama asking for money. The fact that it goes though the shell committee of McCain-Palin Victory 2008 instead of directly to Obama For America is a meaningless distinction. It’s a political donation to elect a specific candidate.

(Obama is also using joint fund-raising committees, but at least isn’t hypocritical about it.)

Voting Machine Problems

2008-10-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

Why do problems like this never seem to benefit Democrats?

Things We Think About Games

2008-09-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

This thin book is a mix of thoughts not only about designing games (“If a rule is optional, give it a name”), but playing them (“Take your turn, already”). Thin in word count (some pages consist only of a single sentence) but dense in information. I don’t agree with everything, but it often made me think.

I definitely recommend Things We Think About Games for any designer (of either computer or physical games).

iTunes Genius

2008-09-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

New in iTunes 8.0 is a “Genius” feature that’s supposed to show music related to a particular track.

Of course, anything called “Genius” had better be smart. And this isn’t. One search turned up songs I can’t buy. A number of cover versions don’t list the original (e.g. Gnarls Barkley’s version of “Gone Daddy Gone” doesn’t link you to the original by Violent Femmes).

However, I really like this status message that I got during the initial process.

Overall, Genius seems to do a better job than the “you may also like” feature that used to be on the iTunes store (in my case, I’m sure that’s because it knows about all the music I bought from eMusic). I might even buy some music from its recommendations!

Microsoft Does Learn

2008-09-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently the new Zune will finally be able to tell time: “Additional updates to the software will add a clock.” You’d think this critical feature would have been in earlier Zunes, but maybe nobody at Microsoft waits for a bus while listening to music. I must have pulled out my iPod several times a week to see how late the bus was.

I haven’t kept track, but I think this may actually be the third release, traditionally when Microsoft finally gets it.

Rest Stop WiFi

2008-08-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

What’s with the free WiFi on Interstate 90 in Washington? I must have stopped at 4 different rest stops over the last couple days. Each had a sign saying there would be WiFi. None of them actually had any. (I saw a guy get off his motorcycle and open a laptop; I figure he was looking too.)

As I recall, the situation was the same on I-5 back in December.

MacBook Air Update

2008-08-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

Looks like Apple’s MacBook Air Update does solve the issue where a core would drop out, particularly during Time Machine backups. (This didn’t happen when the machine was new, so I suspect it’s partly heat-related — its onset coincided with warmer weather.)

Security Update Broke FogBugz

2008-08-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

[Warning: highly technical post, partly so I can find this again if need be.]

I just installed the latest security update (2008-005) on Mac OS X 10.5, and while Fogbugz is accessible, it doesn’t seem like the maintenance service is running. (I can manually run the heartbeat to process e-mail.)

% sudo ./fogbugzmaintd start

FogBugz Maintenance Service started

% ps -A | grep fog

124 ?? 1:06.48 mono /Library/WebServer/fogbugz/Accessories/SearchTool.exe -server /Library/WebServer/fogbugz/Accessories/search.socket

8546 ttys001 0:00.00 grep fog

% ps -A | grep php

8549 ttys001 0:00.00 grep php

I guess it's likely that there’s a different PHP or something...

% which php

/usr/bin/php

% php --version

PHP 5.2.6 (cli) (built: Jul 15 2008 12:18:21)

I changed a line in fogbugzmaintd to read

(cd ${PREFIX}/Accessories; nohup /opt/local/bin/php -d max_execution_time=0 -d allow_call_time_pass_reference=Yes ./fogbugzmaintd.php >/dev/null &)

and it seems fine.

David Dunham in History

2008-08-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

Apparently I have a famous namesake, whom Dunham Place in Brooklyn is named for. (Thanks to Ian Lynch Smith for the pointer.)

King of Dragon Pass Walkthrough

2008-08-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

What a blast from the past! Kalle is posting a walkthrough of King of Dragon Pass in the Quarter To Three Forums. Frankly, I think we probably should have done something like this instead of the marketing we did try. I think it really brings the game alive.

It’s worth mentioning that the game is still available from A Sharp.

I notice that at least one of the team has commented in the thread. As he pointed out, most of the team members are illustrated in the game; it was like going through a photo album seeing their pictures again. (And cool to see the one of the illustrations I have hanging on my wall.)

Thanks Kalle! And thanks to those who’ve ordered the game because of this. I’m really happy that new players can discover it.

Macally AIR2NET (USB Ethernet adapter)

2008-08-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

I decided I wanted to get another USB Ethernet adapter for my MacBook Air, since backup (over 802.11n) sometimes takes way too long. Amazon listed Apple’s adapter, but also the Macally AIR2NET, which I decided to take a chance and order.

So far so good. I just plugged it in. The MacBook Air recognized it, and considered it separate from my Apple adapter (which makes sense, as they should each have a unique MAC address). I then noticed that I was supposed to install a driver. Since the device was working, I decided not to. (I tried contacting Macally to find out what the driver actually did, and while they gave a prompt answer, it was confusing.) My guess is that you do need the driver if you’re running an earlier version of Mac OS X (or presumably Windows), and that the driver is still compatible with 10.5.

One reason to have a USB Ethernet adapter is for travel, when you can’t guarantee finding a WiFi signal. (Or for places like my office, where WiFi is not the internal network I need to access.) Unfortunately, the AIR2NET is a lot bigger than the Apple adapter. Fortunately, I have my choice of which to travel with.

On the other hand, it seems to run a little cooler than the Apple adapter. And it has flashing lights, which might be useful if there’s a problem.

Both devices only support 100 megabit Ethernet, and it’s not yet clear that it will make a difference in backup speed. (My other machines do backup a lot faster via Ethernet, but I’m not sure where the real delay lies.) But the device does seem to work as advertised

Not that Cuil

2008-07-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

There’s been a bit of buzz of late over the new search engine cuil. I decided to put it to the obvious test — search for myself.

Google finds my personal site as the #1 hit, which seems right to me. Cuil found the A Sharp site — that’s my company, so it’s not a bad #1. And it chose the company logo to illustrate the search result. But it used the same company logo to illustrate the story below, about some football player.

There was also a mailing list message from me on the first results page. This was illustrated with a picture of two adult males. One of them might share my name, but has nothing to do with the web site that archived the mailing list.

For fun, I tried searching for “google.” The picture next to the #1 result (which was at least www.google.com) was a broken link…

So I think they have a ways to go on relevance, and need to make sure pictures are actually connected to the search result.

Clang Static Code Analysis Rocks

2008-07-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

Wow. I’d seen Quentin Carnicelli’s note about the Clang static analyzer, but my first attempt to use it was on a C++/Objective-C++ project, and all it did was find potential problems in open source libraries. Turns out it doesn’t really have a C++ parser yet.

Today I tried it on an Objective-C project, Opal. Pay dirt! It found a number of memory leaks (some in code that’s not released yet, but some in code that I didn’t exercise while looking for leaks, such as printing with headers). One of the reported leaks was actually a false positive, but the others were valid problems.

And dead store found some small optimizations (why calculate something you never use?).

The tool is trivial to use (just invoke it from the command line, it figures out your Xcode project from there), and really does find code flaws. Oh, and it’s free. I’m looking forward to being able to use with C++ code.

(It’s available pre-built for Mac OS X developers. Others will have to build it from source.) If you’re using C or Objective-C, you should use it.

TXT TLK

2008-07-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

The phone company sent a mailing which included a list of common SMS abbreviations. While I sometimes feel I should use them to be an authentic texter, with the iPhone’s automatic spelling correction I find it’s usually almost as fast and more accurate to type “see you” rather than “c u.”

(Besides, it gets my money’s worth from SMS by sending more data…)

iPhone App Store

2008-07-04T09:50:00.001-07:00

According to Anita Hamilton in Time, Apple’s upcoming App Store will be “anything but a bargain. … Popcap (sic) Games … plans to charge $9.99 for its popular puzzle game Bejeweled.”

Um, but Bejewelled regularly sells for $14.95. (Bejeweled 2 is $19.99.) This seems entirely reasonable pricing to me: it’s cheaper to buy the iPhone version.

The one main difference, not touched upon in the article, is that the download (Windows or Mac) version is available as a free trial — you get an hour to try it out before being asked to pay. The App Store doesn’t seem to have any way to do this. Developers have informally talked about developing two versions, one limited but free, and the full version for sale, but this would give a much worse user experience than you get downloading a trial game for your PC. Hopefully Apple can resolve this by the time the AppStore launches next week.

A Better iPhone

2008-06-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

I don’t think I’ll be buying a new iPhone in July, largely due to what we know of AT&T’s rate plans (the reasonable monthly fee for the original iPhone factored heavily into my decision to buy one on launch day).

But, I will still have a better iPhone. That’s the cool — and so far as I know, unique* — thing about it. It actually gets better over time, as Apple improves the software.

* I did once have a phone that ran Palm OS; it’s possible that I upgraded that at one point but I can’t recall. Certainly it wasn’t as significant an upgrade as iPhone OS 2.0.

How Can iSuppli Know?

2008-06-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

Kind of amazing to see cost estimates for the 3G iPhone when it’s still 2 1/2 weeks away from release… Wouldn’t it make more sense to actually look inside a shipping unit before spouting off about what it’s made from?

View of Delft

2008-05-21T21:35:00.001-07:00

We recently visited Den Haag (The Hague) to see Jan Vermeer’s “View of Delft.” Reproductions just don’t do it justice. The actual painting had a big emotional impact. I’m not entirely sure why — it’s just a landscape, a city I’d never been to. Probably some of it’s just the sheer technical brilliance — the colors and texture of the painting were so unexpected based on reproductions I’d seen.

I think this is probably one of my top two favorites by Vermeer (“The Kitchen Maid” is the other; it also sparkles in real life but not in reproductions).

By contrast, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” seems to reproduce pretty well — the reproductions look better than “View of Delft,” but the actual painting doesn’t add as much.

Cable Matters

2008-03-29T08:38:00.001-07:00

Earlier I wondered why my G5 wasn’t connecting to my home network at 1000BASE-T speeds. Yesterday I bought some Cat-6 Ethernet cables. I replaced the cable from the computer to the wall (I had cable pulled when I moved into my house, and plugs installed in several rooms), and everything started working!

Which was a good thing, as I did the wiring of my patch panel myself, and I’m a little suspicious of it at times (once in a while a connection goes out and I have to wiggle things a bit).

I replaced another cable, and now I can get gigabit Ethernet speeds to my MacBook Pro as well.

On the other hand, I don’t think any of the short patch cables are Cat-6, and I also have a PowerBook that connects just fine with a Cat-5 cable to the wall.

Apostrophe double header

2008-03-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

Here’s an entry that works for Apostrophe Atrophy (the one in the logo should be curved) and also gets “its” wrong (but with a curved apostrophe)! (“It’s” is a contraction for “it is,” not the possessive of “it.”)

By the way, we’re not talking “smart apostrophes,” since “smart quotes” refers to a process, not the result.

Even More Backing Up Metrics

2008-03-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

I added another machine to my Time Capsule. It took 14:20 to back up 48.4 GB, ~3.4 GB/hour — and this is the one machine in the house that is connecting at 1000BASE-T. This is the slowest backup yet. Admittedly other machines were backing up during part of this time, but no large amounts.

I think there are occasional performance issues, and have filed bug 5801685 with Apple.

Bank Error In Your Favor

2008-03-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

I tend to be paranoid about getting my checking account to balance every month. When it didn’t, I had to go back and make sure each transaction matched (in case I’d written it wrong, which once in a while occurs).

This time, there was a check for $383 that had gone through as $363. Did I write it correctly in my check register? My bank, Washington Mutual, no longer sends back checks. But they do put a scan online. Sure enough, the digitized check clearly read $383. After a slight debate, I clicked on the link next to the check to report an error.

The bank wrote back, saying they would investigate my claim that the check was really for $38.

I replied, reminding them that it should have been $383.

Their reply was that they couldn’t complete the investigation. Huh? All they had to do was click the link that shows a picture of the check.

At this point, I give up. Bank error in my favor, just like in Monopoly.

Another dumb idea from the music business

2008-03-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

So if the music industry makes us pay for pirated music, isn’t that telling us we should pirate? After all, if I’m being forced to pay $5/month for something I am not doing, my natural reaction is to stick it to them and stop buying music, but instead just go for free downloads.