The Bride Wore Black

Kyle, Lisa, Pooteewheet, and I went to The Bride Wore Black at the Trylon tonight.  I thought the Jeanne Moreau series looked interesting (there are two going on in town simultaneously), and the fact that Truffaut (the director) thought Bride wasn't right for his own tastes struck me as something I'd probably enjoy, particularly coming from someone who directed Fahrenheit 451.  

It's a revenge tale and parts of it are very amusing, although it's difficult to know whether they were originally supposed to be.  Particularly the blatant sexist entitlement of all the French men (a politician to be notes that women love politicians because they can rationalize that he set aside all of France for me for one night).  Killing someone via duct-taping them in Harry Potter's closet under the stairs and the whole scene with the child who can't communicate that Julie is not his teacher are also amusing, but not outside a bit of suspended disbelief.  What still comes through is that Julie is single minded in her desire to eliminate those that wronged her, which resonates with a lot of the revenge tales that have been filmed since The Bride Wore Black.  Ebert loved it in a review written before I was born.

This has nothing to do with the movie, but I thought it was fun to poke my camera phone into the window before the film started.  Eryn is looking forward to a seat being named after Peter Venkman.

Unity Bug #2 - That was Fast (and funny)

Thought I'd be smart and fix the increasing difficulty Vector3 issue by just making the velocity of the asteroids faster and faster based on the wave count.  So I exposed the wave count on the Game Controller and accessed it via the move script where asteroids keep set their velocity based on a public property.

I forgot to account for my wave array being 0 based.  I failed to account for the fact that my shots and asteroids were tied to the same velocity/move script, meaning my bolts go faster as the asteroids go faster.  Perhaps not a bad thing, although strange.  And my ship's movement isn't tied to the same movement script, so it doesn't get faster as the rocks start to shoot down the screen at breakneck speed.

My first bug

I've got music and waves going and scoring and restart in my Unity3d game.  And then I tried to get fancy and add a value that slowly moved the waves closer and closer.  I thought I should add:

1.) waves move closer and closer or faster and faster.
2.) objects that aren't shot, but pass the player and destroyed against the boundary are negative points.
3.) each shot is potentially a negative point (because I'm a dick)
4.) a shot counter and objects destroyed to track a few stats to show at the end
5.) a ship destruction value (because I'm a dick)
6.) potentially a few lives with the ability to get more with a higher score.  I hope that rolls over and gives infinite lives because it would be old school.

So I started on #1 and moved the asteroids 5 units closer after the first wave.  Result...unshootable asteroids that, after the first wave, became ghost asteroids.  It seemed to be a float value and I was adding an int, so I modified it and tried again.  Same behavior.  So I use the range for the y value like the x value and added the number directly as an int and then a float.  Same behavior.  It's exciting to have a coding challenge, even if it's minor.

I feel like I'm coding VB COM again.  A lot of setting .Text against text objects and just sort of attaching things to each other to use them.  It would be nice if some of the students I interviewed played around with the Unity tutorials just long enough to talk through the object structure and why you have to locate the game controller rather than instantiate try to access it from every instance of a tumbling rock.  Good lessons there.

Unity3d - the Asteroids

I've made it as far as adding the asteroids on a wave basis and allowing for explosions between the shots and the rocks and the rocks and the ship.

I'm also reading Nystrom's Game Programming Patterns, which make sense in the context of the mesh and transforms I'm using, but is much more about traditional software patterns.  Still, a very good read.

Peep Show

I've been watching Peep Show while I bike.  Today's viewing included The Man Show (season 2, episode 5).  I like this two part quote, spread out during the episode...

"I'm staring into the abyss.  I don't like the abyss.  Maybe I can fill the abyss with lots and lots of [business] calls."

And later... "I have entered the abyss.  I have bought a house in the abyss.  I am forwarding my post to the abyss."

And I like that bathrooms are called bogs, although that would confuse the cranberry growers in the state next to mine and, potentially, really upset them if they thought someone was defecating in their cranberry bogs.

Sploosh!

My feet are still wet.  Eryn went to bed and almost immediately started yelling, "I HEAR LEAKING! I HEAR LEAKING!"  We weren't sure what she was talking about at first, but she was right.  The seal on the bottom of her fish tank gave out and was spilling water all over the place.  We seem to have saved everyone, but it's a serious mess. Pooteewheet is down there scraping and ruining the strainer for ever being pasta-safe again.  Messy.

Minnedemo 22

I went to Minnedemo 22 last night at the Depot in downtown Minneapolis.  I tried to have dinner at Zen Box beforehand, but I was looking for food prior to 5:00 p.m., so it was a no go.  I ended up over at the Crooked Pint eating a peanut butter juicy lucy.  Good.  But not as good as the Blue Door (Longfellow) which, I have to say, is my favorite (and Eryn likes their wings; and it's close to guitar lessons) after Chetek, WI.  But that just might be sentiment speaking.

I will admit, I didn't stay for the whole thing.  I got downtown too early, so I was getting squirrely after a few presentations.  I watched Who's Driving, an app for coordinating car pools if you have kids in extracurricular events.  My sentiment was I'm really happy I never have to carpool and even consider using that app. I see the happy people on the app website and think, "They're so happy they're f***ing over their friends."

I watched Twistjam, which involved an Asian guitar player (does his race matter?) sitting on stage not really playing guitar for 7 minutes.  The app is cool, but Mike and Eryn told me you have to enter your own cords which is a pain in the ***.  They're playing with it to see what the limitations are.  It's a Rock Band style guitar-learning app.

Litejot.com, notable for being presented by a U of MN student.  Dude.  Come work for me.

Homi, which I shared with Charlotte because it was created by a Carleton econ alum.  She helped me interview an intern last week and right afterwards I talked to a Carleton intern candidate.  Most of the Carleton folks I've talked to are above average.  Which is strange for a college known for liberal arts skills.  But I've found a good prof or two with real world experience makes all the difference in the world.

And YouAreHear.org.  Well.  I played with that all the way to Izzy's where I had a bourbon izzy on a scoop of Zin chocolate ice cream.  The presenter was particularly funny and joked that he was the only person not to use the word monetized.  More of an art project than anything else.  But fun if you're wandering around downtown and paying enough attention that you're pretty sure you won't get mugged.

Vidcomet and Aurelius.  You're on your own.  Although Aurelius sounds particularly interesting to me as a manager, so I'll be checking it out.

Destroy the Object

I'm tempted to use Unity3d as an interview tool for intern/new grad candidates as a great example of the dangers of not getting rid of your objects.  It was cool to see it hang on to shot objects forever because they never ran into a border which would de-instantiate them. Why are interview candidates not infinitely smart compared to me when I was looking for a job?  Seriously - with tools like this, you should be able to talk for hours.  And hours.

Lilac-Breasted Roller

My boss gave me an unasked for book, User Story Mapping from O'Reilly.  I wasn't sure what to think about it, although only 45 pages in I can honestly say even as we're reading the book we're not exactly following the practices.  There's a very compressed version of Ben Horowitz's Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager on page xviii and xix.  The bits about reference customers versus competitors, (not) prioritizing, and prototypes every day are all obvious failures for us (at least in my projects).  

A bit evangelistic, or more accurately perhaps a bit motivational, but Agile books usually are.  I'll chat about it a bit more as I get further in, although the forwards go up to xliv, so I'm already 44 pages (a 1/5) in before the book even gets started.

But my first question for my manager was why did he give me a book with a Lilac-breasted Roller on the cover, known for it's life-long monogamy?  Was it a not so subtle hint that I (and my co-manager, who also received a copy) wasn't leaving the company until I retire or die?  That doesn't upset me, but it's disturbing to have your manager say it with a book.  He told me he was going to respond, and then just didn't know what to say to that and gave up, which he was pretty sure was what I was up to all along.  Look at that, he hasn't even cracked open his copy yet and we're already embracing the core tenant of mutual understanding.  Win!

Ship

I've got my ship flying around in the second Unity tutorial.  I think 20 minutes a night (really about 30+ of work) is about as much as I can manage. I'm going to declare it good progress, despite the fact that I can fly off the bottom of the screen. I fixed that - I just have to remember if I edit values while I'm in play mode, they revert.

That error message isn't for me - that's leftover Unity 4 stuff from their finalized scripts in case I get lazy.

IT Management Career Guidance

Last Friday, before the long weekend, I went over to career day at Inver Grove Hills to present to eighth graders.  I still can't tell whether they were forced to sign up, could volunteer to avoid other classes, or what the deal was.  They didn't seem particularly excited to be there.  I joked with one of the girls as one of the three rounds was getting underway that perhaps I should have used "Highly Salaried IT Manager" as my career title just to get more people to listen to me.  She gave me the obligatory he's-old-I-should-laugh-to-humor-him-so-he-doesn't-do-something-crazier laugh.

It was three twenty minute sessions and I ad hoced it rather than coming with something prepared.  I think I suffered in comparison to uniformed police, dog handlers, and EMTs.  I'm not sure how I fared compared to the therapist.  And I dressed down in jeans, a corporate t-shirt, and corporate hoodie, so hopefully I looked more relaxed than the guy in the suit and tie and dress shoes.

I talked about not starting in tech, but ending up there.  How career decisions can change but you can leverage what you'd already been learning if you're careful.  What a typical day on an agile team looks like (oh yeah...dream on).  How self-direction and continuous learning play a big part (sounding better and better, isn't it eighth graders?).  And then I talked about how my job has changed several times without much in the way of additional interviewing (more interesting).  That I've been abroad as part of my job (even more interesting).  And then my salary.  Which perked a few of them right up.  I babbled about tech a lot and talked about programming speakers (the mechanical kind) and the internet of things, content, code security and SOC 2 certifications (it always sounds more glamorous in my head than coming off the tongue), and working with different roles locally and internationally.  And, of course, people management.  The sub gave me some helpful advice after the first round and said, "They might not even know what CompSci means."  It was a good point given how much it annoys me when people assume I know their compressed words and acronyms.

My daughter's friends were in the library when I started and were jealous of my free donut and coffee.  Those might be the two people most inspired by my visit because it came with free food.  I think next time I need a fancier presentation with interactive web apps and code visualizations.  Think shinier.  Because obviously every day as an IT manager is shiny and I should trick them into an appropriate career choice.

Merit Badges

I had a lot of merit badges as an Eagle Scout, so I always find them amusing, because they were so different in difficulty and attractiveness.  Dangerous Minds has a great post up about Luke Drozd's alternate badge selections.  Very funny, and they reminded me of an old Jezebel post which, in turn, reminded me that most of those badges were courtesy of a contest on Worth 1000.

I noted on Facebook that I'm very surprised Mean Mr. Mustard wasn't responsible for the RTFM N00b merit badge, given his history of making co-workers cry using that language.

Science ##

I was working on a new Unity tutorial today that involved multiple light sources.  I find it amazing that I can use a piece of software to just create different levels and hues of light and the physics within the application takes care of smoothing it across the object/s.  That's an amazing amount of power to wield with almost no programmatic effort (on my part).

Here's a main light, rim light, and fill light, all bouncing off my main object with varying intensities, hues, and positions.  It mostly came down to copy and paste.

It reminded me of this cover from the Science magazines my parents ordered for me when I was younger.  There was one cover where they showed several pool balls rendered by a computer.  In 1984, this was freaking magic to me.  The fact that it was difficult to even find the covers tells you how early in popular computing 1984 was.  I couldn't find the correct magazine searching on line, but Kyle tracked it down.  It's the one in the upper right corner.  But searching around for the right cover let me see all the issues that I remember.  There isn't a single issue of this magazine I didn't cherish and read and reread and there wasn't a single cover that I didn't immediately remember.  Between those and Gaming magazine, that was a huge part of my teenage reading (well, and Mack Bolin books at $0.10 each from the flea market, but that was altogether different).  That 20 discoveries that changed our lives issue I carried around with me for weeks; maybe even months.

There was one on sharks (I believe that was early on, Science 81) that had me obsessed with the critters.  As well as this one about undersea exploration from the same year that was so cool.

And this one, a larger version of one of those in the montage above, which is a beautiful cover.  There's a wikipedia article on the magazine, but it's short and no associated covers.  Probably worth fixing were I so inclined.  The article includes this sad bit, that I remember well because I hated the format of Discover compared to Science ##, "Science was purchased in 1986 by Time Inc. and folded into Discover, the last issue being July 1986. A few issues of Discover after the merger feature a stamp noting "Now including Science 86", but this quickly disappeared. This claim was somewhat suspect, however, as all of the Science staff was immediately laid off after the takeover."

Unity 3d - First Attempt

I am exceedingly proud of being able to follow instructions. I have a board game I'd like to make...actually two or three or four or five. And between Unity and Snap SVG, maybe I can create online and paper copies. I'm not sure they'll ever be for anyone but me, but still, fun to see something I can qualify as a product instead of only in my head.