above: my keyboard design that I threw together to show what kind of keyboards could be done in touch screens. here is the original image I made before I crammed it into the image with the macbook.

Scenario: You spill beer on a keyboard.
Scenario: You wear off the keys to your keyboard.
Scenario: You are sick of shaking out strange things from your keyboard when upside-down.
Scenario: You have keys that stick.

What are all common threads in those? Yes, the low keyboard, nobody really thinks about the keyboard that we all are sitting in front of, many of you now have your fingers poised above the ‘correct’ keys.

Next time you are in a restaurant or a bar that was established in the last five years, notice something about the systems the people there use, they are all touch-screen. Bar-none, you will NOT find someone punching actual buttons.. They break.

I propose something and actually it is a DREAM of mine, and this something is what I see all around me. Laptops DO NOT NEED ACTUAL KEYBOARDS. And, I mean laptops, not desktops. We don’t need them, and they are the ‘laptop trackballs’ that made a brief, yet abortive appearance a while back, why did we get rid of laptop trackballs? Because like a normal trackball they require maintenance, AND they break. And so do keyboards, if you have not noticed.

I will come out and say it, I HATE KEYBOARDS. The usb one I have now has had most it’s keys worn off and it is one year old, and I have seen that a full pint of beer fits in an iMac keyboard, I have two cats, and right now I know I am typing against a sheet of cat hair inside my keyboard most likely and, in my three laptops while my synaptic pad is great, those buttons are getting stuck and worthless. Let me repeat, I HATE KEYBOARDS, they are filthy and gross and invite a lot of junk to build up, I never like using another persons keyboard and right now I am pissed about my ‘c’ key which is misbehaving on a laptop that is a little more than a year old and I have to press it harder than the others..

Inventors, this is your mousetrap to reinvent, and while I am irritated someone might.

Look at the following ideas, and LOOK at the links, or nothing I say will make any sense, I am thinking of like a 17-inch collapsible iphone, keep that in mind with my comments below:

This one is nice (link)
This one is half-way there (link) but still is thinking “keyboard” which is wrong wrong wrong.
Here is another (link), and the same problem arises, why do you keeping thinking it has to be a keyboard? Do you not own a laptop, get with the times?

Getting closer (link) , but still not really the idea..

These guys (link) are about the closest I have seen.. But, they need to be able to have the INSIDE edge push together to have less of a gap so you can have ONE big screen, and they don’t show the keyboard designs.

Now, while they have great ideas, I think that a perfect laptop for me ‘right now and moving forwards’ would be one that has:
a) dual touch screen, really… the whole damn thing, why waste all that real estate around the keys.
b) a way for me to set up my games to have touch screen, or even automatic in game installation in the “keyboard area”
c) I want it to be spill-proof, which means, no buttons… *maybe* a power button… or just have it turn on when open and skip that one *ewww* mechanical *done ewww* button..
d) I want the keyboard space to BE video/screen space when I fold it down flat and the whole thing is open.. I want that real estate.
e) I want this dead space on my keyboard to hold my calendar my clock, or whatever widget I want. I don’t want it in my work space… who had that dumb-ass idea, it is an aside to have a clock or a calendar next to your document or your code, slap it down in the generally unused space and give us our screen realestate back…
f) I want to be able to flip my laptop around/over and use the ’screen’ as the keyboard, and so on and so forth, this would be handy in a coffee shop or while doing a presentation to not have to ‘turn’ the whole thing, just tilt it over…
g) With the above, I want to be able to put the two halves of my laptop together and turn a 17″ screen with 12.67″ x 11.33″ into double the screen and have a full movie event if I want… and then, have slide-up menu’s for keyboards and controls and have it switch back to the down-side keyboard mode if I pull it back apart. (think about that)
h) I am a programmer and am not addicted to “key-feel” like others, and touchscreen is fine for a keyboard, as long as I can ‘rest’ my hands, fix that shit.
i) I want to have my OWN keyboard layouts (and I am working on some now in my little graphics program to show you what I mean) and if someone is arabic who is with me, I want to see the touchscreen switch on command to their language when I choose it. It has been FAR too long I have been stuck with layouts from people who think one way is ‘the way’ and won’t let me have my own layout ( i.e. I like ergo, but would like the keys further apart and split much further than any keyboard now, for me.. ALL the way to the right and left and leave the middle for something else, also I want my ‘F’ keys on the left side.. NOT on the top, with a modifiable layout I could easily accomplish this, but with a hardware board, and this crap that I am stuck with on my laptops I have NO choice, and it sucks, someone seriously I want to actually redo my keyboard FOR ME)..

These are not little ideas, these are big ideas, but I think that right now the only company that MIGHT get-it is apple, so… If you are listening apple, make my damn laptop and I will be first in-line to buy it and it would be the first apple product I have ever purchased, besides, you guys might make it even better that I dream about.. Until then, I will continue my NO on mac, because to me, you are worse than microsoft, you don’t just control the software you control the hardware as well (and charge *way* too much for that shit, look at the HP site, they have 4GB solid state tablet PC’s with max EVERYTHING for less than $1700.. Apple has NO touchscreen or true tablet PC as of this writing)

Now, that is my dream, and my ideas… Someone make it happen please?

UPDATE 03/11/09:
I was right Apple is having something in the works.

Second) I originally came here working remotely, yes I thought that it was not fun this time and chose to switch to full time employ here in Boston (for more money than I was making at my ‘relaxing job in NY’ as well) ..

Now on to other things, I would like to talk a bit about CEP (Complex Event Processing) and it’s relationship to what developers and engineers do.

Basically, CEP is a query that runs continually on an sql server (that is very general I know) and that server has several inputs which continually input data… Okay, we got that. Now, many of you know about stored procedures and triggers in modern databases, these are replicates of this idea that are ’selfishly’ based. CEP is one of these new buzzwords and ideas, and to think “oh, that is it” is folly, there are people charging over $10k/month for this (I am serious).. The entire point is that you have streams which feed into a database, the continual query has a ruleset that it follows and your business logic is implemented in real time. Okay, cool.. BUT has the world forgot about TRIGGERS in databases, and stored procedures? I realize that this is designed to circumvent DB programmers who have been doing what they do for a long time, but hey…

Following that I don’t want any comments about how I rail against {x paradigm), I love you guys, but just read on..

I suspect that mysql will implement their own version shortly instead of using sqlstream.com (which is linked off the mysql site) and postgres has telegraphCQ (google it) and so on and so forth.. These guys need to get on the ball and explain to business that they have had this ability for a long time and display they are in fact the DB companies we trust and not trying to hamper some new technology that people are charging insane amounts per month for, the same things they could easily program in triggers and stored procs..

CEP is simple, continual queries, and rulesets to work on those queries.. so, if you have stock data on an input and it is flowing in, along with other stock data, you can set a rule saying “if stock A is below 85 and stock B is above 34 then buy stock A” … (that is a very simplified example), but these are not neural networks tied in with GA folks, these are “business rules” programs.. and if you know ANYTHING about modern databases and triggers and stored procedures then you are already doing this stuff…

I spent a good deal of my day today reading and researching what these things do and have concluded they are NOT good for true expert systems, but they are good for many others and are quick to build and deploy, but if you are building an expert system you will be better served to write your own rule set inside the database that stores your data, they all support them now.

The only position I could find myself in using a CEP is with a neural-net committee system as it would be easier to program the CEP to follow rulesets of a committee consensus and fire off programs than to write the logic code, that is it.. And this is ACTUALLY what I am doing with CEP…

However, I keep finding myself thinking that a trigger in mysql would do the same damn thing.

If you have some thoughts on that, please let me know if I am wrong..

Here are a few new ones that I will offer my personal reviews of. My reviewing methods are really not like other reviewers. My method is to start off with a beginning value (this is the same way that spamassassin works in classification of spam) which I would call “the perfect anime” and then as some of the crap and garbage that hoses so many animes creep their way in I shave off ‘points’. Some elements of an anime might be “anime killers” for me personally, so for instance, on a one to ten scale, an anime that is about “giant robots, mecha or revolves around or features them” I would consider that an ‘anime killer’ and stop watching. That particular theme, mecha, I consider a -5.0 (or -4 depending) which in my idea of scale anything -4 or over is a killer. Other killers are pure Otaku jerk-fest panty-raid anime and tentacle sex anime. I am just not interested in watching that. Some things like the phrases “mana, chakra or other mystery power words”, “just a normal high school student” and “entrance exams” are minor negatives while “Shinigami” or “vampires / vampire themed characters and/or creatures featured in the anime” is a -3.5 for me, almost a killer, but can be saved. I have a few bonus point items that I like, which are “amazing artwork and look and feel of the anime as a whole” (Dennou Coil would fit into this category) or “true originality in spite of cheeseball super powers” (Darker than black) etc.

What would I consider near ‘perfect’ anime? I would have to say, Lain (serial experiments), Cowboy Bebop, Dennou Coil, and similar ones. If enjoy those, you will appreciate my tastes.

I want to set up this system in ajax so you can select various items that bug or don’t bug you and watch as animes are removed/added to the list in various order though my list is not complete.
Anyway, on with my reviews, first impressions are everything, so I am just reviewing episode one of the following animes.

GHOST HOUND Episode 1 : Score 8.1 of 10

Ghost hound episode one has some good potential. The sub I found had perfect 3d audio (left and right was awesome in my headphones) and the quality and ‘feel’ of the anime was perfect. It is based in a school setting and this set up episode has me interested in continuing to watch. It *really* has the feel of the anime Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, which I found fascinating as an anime, as it is probably the only one that has ever actually affected my sleep, it seriously it throws you for such a loop.
I was intrigued from the beginning of this anime to see what going to happen next and the first ep only had hints at special powers, mostly what we see is a ghost/spirit. I was happy that things don’t enter the world of absolute insanity with flying around and swinging huge swords or a secret club of kids with powers, you can actually have time and connect with the characters and develop interest in what is going on with them.
Ghost hound is almost like an alternate Kure Nai (which I review next) in that both of these do not features demons, monsters, special mana-powers or other such wild stuff (not that I don’t enjoy that at times, but I do like to see creativity in true storytelling without having to fall back on old cliches of anime to fuel the story arc).
In this episode we are introduced to the assumed protagonist and several other characters and “situations” that we may be dealing with in coming episodes. In a short amount of time we come to understand that the protagonist is narcoleptic and when he falls asleep he goes on a sort of astral projection and can see some of his current surroundings and the people around him. One neighbor girl was able to see him during one of his projections which is naturally curious. This ‘ability’ seems to stem from a traumatic event that happened when he was younger. It appears from some interestingly well done flashbacks that he was kidnapped, and is undergoing counseling for.
After all the introductions and firm understanding of his place in the world and at his school we are finally teased with the ‘namesake’ ghost at the end, though not through our protagonists eyes. There is some suspicion raised with some new people who have showed up in his small home town, a new student who acts odd and his counselor was abruptly replaced and wants access to the ‘dreams’ that he has recorded when he wakes on a cassette tape.

Kure Nai Episode 1 : Score 8.6 of 10

Sometimes I watch an anime and feel like I am watching a story that is human and believable, that perhaps it was taken from the pages of a book or was a story that inspired a movie. A story that has the feel of ‘life’ in it, that maybe it was not all made up.
Kure nai gives you this feeling, there is nothing really remarkable about any of the characters, but none of them “act” like you would expect them to in an anime. Many of these characters actually surprise you and kind of turn the ideas you would initially have (and the anime ‘lets’ you have) on their heads. This ‘twist’ make you get the feeling you are not watching just another anime, you are watching something new and interesting.
Kure Nai is perhaps my favorite new anime so far, I am now downloading episode 2 so I can find out what happens next.
The basic idea (without spoilers) is that “something” has happened and a young girl has been removed from her extremely wealthy family and placed in the care of a person who hires people to do certain “jobs” around the city that people pay for such as stopping vandals for a shop owner, or stopping a stalker for a client, and our one young and inexperienced school boy who is under the wing of this person is charged with taking care of this girl. You would expect this to end up in antics and head-bonking cheese anime style with nosebleeds, pantie-shots, and little sweat drops and stuff but this story never bothers with elements so trite and from the looks, and depth of the characters, I doubt they ever will take this story there. It is touching and human, and the way the ‘feel’ of the anime is and the quality of it, I think this one will be a good one to follow if you enjoy anime for real stories and not just crazy swords and ninja-powers.

EDIT: After watching episode 2, I would probably bump up the rating on this anime, it just gets better and more interesting. Maintains the story, which is human and real and sets up some movement into the arc of the series. It reminds me somewhat of darker than black in the way it treats some aspects of the story and characters. If you have watched DTB then you know this is a good thing.

Soul Eater 1 : Score 5.2 of 10

Watching this show there are some things that I just want to start screaming about, but the production quality in some of the shots is just top notch and I cannot just toss it out the window. There is also no pretension about being serious in these portions of the anime. I also have read a good deal of the manga for this so I knew what I was expecting and it is just a funny romp that almost makes fun of a lot of the genre all while throwing around some western sterotypes out and doing a few things that are original.
The basics are that in episode one we are introduced to Maka and Soul Eater. Soul eater is a young constant drooling boy who is also a scythe that maka wields to do their work for the “shinigami-sama” (which would be a huge negative but because of the way it is portrayed is almost a poke at Bleach) is too funny.
I swear this anime was inspired by A nightmare before christmas with all the various little areas and scenes of the “death city” and the “hook cemetary” etc. It is a fun romp worth the effort if you are looking for a non-serious anime that is just fun to watch, actually pretty fun, not to mention the future episodes will just continue the fun with Blackstar and Kid coming in the next two episodes.
I wish I could rate this higher, but it really hits some points for me that get close to making me not want to watch it .. ever, but it has some saving graces.

Rosario + vampire : Score 1.9 of 10

Sometimes I will read a summary on some anime news sites and be interested and then kind of disappointed with an anime. This is “sort of” one of those cases and is reminding me of why I have the “vampire” rule about anime and avoiding any “jampire” anime (that is MY term for it.. I COINED IT).
The idea that got me to download the first ten eps before watching was the base idea that the young protagonist is accidentally placed into a private school for “monsters” instead of the private school he was supposed to be assigned to. While there he must hide the fact that is actually human or be eaten all the while maintaining a best friend a girl who is actually a vampire but has a seal to keep her true nature from coming out or if so she turns into a suddenly older badass (which is funny cause i am not sure why she would need to go to school). There is some real meat here they could work with to make some seriously fun storytelling. I will be honest and say that so far it is just slightly better than average for some random otaku pantie-shot spew’ime. I will probably finish out these eps in hopes they figure it out but the story so far is not compelling and is making slow headway into actually gaining my interest in why I care that he can remove the seal or why he was not detected coming into the school.. My guess is that it will turn out he does indeed have some “monster” in him or something, but will I really care at all then, doubtful. Might as well watch “Love-hina” or something if I wanted the story thus far.

EDIT: watching episode two of this like being dropped in a boys middle school creative writing class where the subject is alternative sexuality and humor. I am not sure I want to waste more time on this.

Allison & Lillia : Score 7.9 of 10

This particular anime was not exactly what I was expecting. In holds the promise of a grand story and high adventure for sure. The sounds production is excellent, the art production is good, not the flash of some of the new ones, but still excellent. The beginning reminds me of Last exile in that you have an alternate world country with familiar tech from about 40 years ago and the country is split between two warring nations in a ceaseless war. At the start of this adventure we have the typical class genius who gets a visit from an old friend who is the typical fly-girl who thumbs her nose at the establishment she works for (in this case the military). The two meet up with the typical “seer” in this case the old man who tells them a fantastic tale about a treasure which could end the ages-long war and then is swiftly abducted in front of them and whisked away. Our heroes naturally make chase and that is the first episode. However, the methods used were somewhat done before, they still approached them in kind of unique ways leaving much open and witha great promise for a large and expansive adventure ahead. The classic formula is the main reason I knocked some points off this anime, as everything else is set up perfect and it seems this will be one to watch.

Macross frontier : Score 5 of 10

Oh god why did there have to be Mechs in this anime! They are not needed and it is like they threw them in for the fans. Luckily it seems that from this first episode that they are NOT the main focus of this anime, which is the only saving grace I can give this otherwise amazing work. The sound quality is excellent, the animation and chase scenes are some of/if not perhaps the best I have seen. The computer overlay work is great, really I have only two major issues with this anime and one is the mecha (which are actually transformer mecha and in the context of this anime I suppose could make sense) and the other is the gratuitous ’singing’ scene they managed to work into it, though it did seem to fit so it is excusable.
The base premise here is that mankind has gone out exploring space in huge grouped fleets with “city” vessels which have huge cities inside them. They are being chased off and on by some creatures which for some reason (unknown to us) want to destroy them. (bsg’ish … anyone?). In the beginning we are introduced to the female heroine of our story who is about to go see a concert by a super famous singer. We are also introduced to our heroes who are aerial acrobatics experts in flight suits who do a special part of the singers show (they are loosely connected to the military it seems) our young girl tries to get around the line and stumbles into the acrobats and they meet and she offers them some food at her restaurant etc etc the show starts and there is some drama, meanwhile out in space the alien baddies decide to attack the city and manage to get through. The concert is evacuated and our young girl is stranded in front of the alien creature. In swoops our hero who jumps into the flight weapon of the leader of the squad the alien just destroyed and then it cuts to the end. From the preview the next episode is a chase scene.
Normally due to the fact there is a mech in this I would toss it, however I think this is a damn good anime and the mechs are not the focus so I might be able to deal with those parts. If however this turns into another “mech” show where the government decides to give a 14 year old kid a billion dollar mech to trash the countryside I will stop watching right then and there.

xxxHolic : Score 3.4 of 10

First off, and I should get this out of the way, the xxx portion does not refer to porn or anything like that. On first inspection I watched this and went WTF?!? There is one of those little pikachu things in it and I *HATE* those things. Then there is the whole girl crush/head bonk little sweat thing with the cut-scenes of huge grins in silly drawing style. *slash* .. *slash* go points on my rating scale. Then we get into the story, though there is not much yet, and it is mildly amusing.
If you have seen Mr. Magoos wonder emporium (the movie) then you can understand ‘kind of’ what the setup here is. Our main protagonist helps out a ’shop’ which as it turns out is run by a mysterious lady who lifts curses and grants wishes. However, the wishes she grants seem to always have side effects that people would not comprehend until later, so they are sort of a learning device. This entire first episode revolves around the protagonists friend who gets a curse placed on him by a spider which closes his eye, so he decided to help his friend out and so swapped seeing in his right eye to lift his friends curse. A lot of talking and antics in the shop later we get to where his friend is trying to counter the counter curse because his father happened to be a shaman of some type. The preview of the next one looks like much of the same, I might watch it but overall I do not think this is an anime that I will be watching. Pikachu thing.. pfft

After reading reviews and actually looking through a WHOLE slough of these various engines I came to the conclusion that like everything else there are ‘tools for the job’ and you need to pick the right tool for the exact job at hand while maintaining flexibility for things that you may need to do later and for growth. It is also helpful to work with languages and tools you currently know and enjoy working with. So I came up with some basics for what I need for my project because picking a game engine is perhaps one of the single most important parts of coding a game.

1. Cross platform - windows/linux/mac in that order of preference with at least win/linux
2. scriptable - Lua/Squirrel or Python bindings with good network support
3. large and active community - Busy forums that are helpful where people share code (I personally like to share code when I solve a particularly vexing problem)
4. ability to handle 3d - but NOT specifically a FPS engine (this was a major issue with a lot of the engines I looked at), I am much more interested in third person and or 3d/iso’ish with bounded-selects for my particular game.
5. Free or very cheap - Why on earth would I want to pay a lot of money for something that I would then be limited in my ability to share my enhancements with the community later? (especially when this is a small project with one coder) There are many other ways to make money on software.. Host servers for games, write books, paid support contracts etc.
6. Speed of use and decent learning curve - I do not want to spend a year learning some crazy API or some language some developers made up to create their own games.
7. No click and drag / piecemeal engines - I.E. If an engine states that you just need to click together parts and then fill in some info to create your game I get really suspicious.
8. Customizable - Why would I want my game to look just like someone else’s game and have reviews go “Oh this game is just like ___ but acts sort of like ___ don’t bother because you have seen it all before”

Once I started comparing a lot of the engines to my list they dropped off like flies. So in the end, because of my particular needs and want of simplicity, I was left with OGRE3d and Irrlicht, both of which fit the bill nicely and are well documented and used render engines that are not specifically boxed into one corner or another or limited by insane design schemes and/or unusable for my purposes. While being somewhat simple (Irrlicht is dead simple and I would highly recommend for hacking out quick 3d visualizations). Both engines are specifically for C++, which is all good but after taking a nice close look at my projects needs, and the fact that it really is not that complex graphically, working with optimized C++ is really not a big need as I am thinking I might have at most 20 characters/models on my screen at the most and the rest will interface changes that are done via network. Having to comb through the myriad of C++ libraries that I am only passingly familiar with and having to learn their syntax, quirks and funky compile issues all while ‘also’ learning a render engine left me with a foul taste in my mouth. However I pressed on and started to brush up on my C++ (which I have not used Visual C++ or Code::Blocks in a very long time and both these have changed dramatically since my last foray into C++). Then, I ran across something interesting while perusing the OGRE wiki.

PyOgre is a python binding to Ogre and I started looking into it and thought to myself “hey, I know python and I know a lot of the libraries as well.. this could speed up my development time.. hrm”. PyOgre bindings hook directly into the Ogre libs and Python runs anywhere. This might actually fit the bill, it easily fits into my list of needs and is lightweight enough and has a very good learning curve for me. So to be thorough off I went to the python game resources on the python site and I decided to look into the other engines that are out there for python that may been an even better fit for my particular needs. Most of these are HIGHLY specialized libs for doing things like math visualization or specific bindings to other engines I had already thrown out. Then while combing through the list I found ONE engine (unfortunately) named Panda3D (also see the wikipedia article) (it rises above it’s cheeseball name upon inspection) that seems like a decent fit and I am now in early stage playing around with it. So far I have found sample code for almost all the elements of the game I want to create and it appears to have the full features of other engines as well, though I would not be locked into having to deal with more than I want and can easily crank out a server app using stackless python (which on a low end box could handle many more clients than I could probably find for my game)

So finally at the end of two weeks of downloading, compiling and trying out engines, attempting to interact with the various communities and ducking shyster companies that want to nickel and dime every naive, hobby or wanna-be game maker (which by the way I find deplorable as some companies could actually be discouraging a lot of potential talent from actually creating their games by doing this, thus hurting the industry as a whole) *cough* Torque *cough* I have found that I came full circle back to python (pygame was the first engine I worked on the initial stages of this idea, that was three years ago) and ended up blending some preconceptions I naively had about game engines.

I am left with a choice between two engines that are different but fit the bill.
On one hand I have the very open ended and extensible OGRE via PyOGRE which it easy enough to be up and running with and on the other I have Panda 3d which already has many of the Pathfinding, audio, animation and import modules I need but I could extend it out quickly (and if I want can also program in C++ for parts or all of it)
In a straight comparison to be up and running quickly I am leaning towards Panda3d but I am still doing a little research into PyOGRE. Hopefully my next post I will plop some code and screen shots in here.

In the meantime, I hope this post saves someone some time their search for an engine for a game that is NOT an FPS (sorry they all look the same to me now, and are boring) but it not some 2d 1990 nintendo looking mess.
If you looking to build an RTS (real time strategy) or simulation style game (think ISO’ish) I would recommend you look into what Python has to offer.

Hi,
Thanks for the comparison of CS and OGRE as well as your post about
switching away from Torque..
I have been messing around with it and was considering it as a game
engine but lucky me my ’spidey-sense’ kicked in looking through the
completed and in-development games and so I started digging around and
OGRE really seems like where it is.. Been pointing some folks to your
post about 10 months of Torque and you guys quit it.. (sorry about
that btw..) but at least you could point some of the rest of us away
from the torque engine..

Few things that should make anyone suspicious of the Torque engine is:
a) they have the largest base of users (or so it seems) but one of the
lowest numbers of actual games created with it.
b) all the ‘paid plugins’ and ‘packs’.. smells of a money pump to me..
like one of the free mmorpgs that you have pay for stuff to get
anywhere..
c) the restriction of content only for license holders, like the
tutorials that you can only look at if you paid for the license.
d) the walled garden approach ‘feel’ you get with all the above..

thanks again, OGRE seems the way to go.

Which in turn got me this response

I’m only too glad to share my experiences with others in similar situations.
I hope I can save you some time in your search for a decent game engine.
IMO, Torque isn’t it. I’ve lost faith in Garage Games as a company. I feel
they’re somewhat unscrupulous and/or random in their business approach.
Certainly not the kind of company or platform I want to base my livelihood
on, as I’m hoping my game will eventually be.

Best of luck to you in your project as well.

I replied with

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, in my experience open source projects are almost always the best
when you are doing things to base a business off. I used to work for a
Microsoft shop that in it’s early phase was almost done in by
licensing.
Later I went to a domain name registrar (directnic) which was at
the time very profitable and built their entire business on the back
of apache/php/mysql and all 100% open source projects and they did
very well (until godaddy ate them up and they switched primary
business to parked.com)..
Anyway.. as a ‘test’ I dropped a fishing for a job post in the forums
there.. Manhattan coder looking for *paid* work in a physical office,
7 years experience coding, etc and not one response except one guy who
tried to give me job hunting tips.
I am now convinced that Torque is a hobby/learning engine and nothing more..
Not to mention the new license..

Anyway, I am rambling.. they almost sucked me because what I want to
do is basically take an idea I had for a web game move it into an app
so I don’t need to deal with browser issues and can have some real
animations and such.. Torque seemed the way to do it..

Good luck on your game, will definitely check it out.

and the following came back

That response doesn’t surprise me at all. I think the whole GG community
are unrealistic people who don’t realize how bad Torque is, otherwise they’d
already left and gone to a different engine, or made their own.

And thanks for the good luck, we can always use some of that!

now..
This is basically the response you get from people who have used this engine..
I am glad that I didn’t let myself get suckered in and I suppose I hope that this post can help others who may be making a choice about game engines.

My two cents on the matter is, Torque is a great learning/hobby engine but to even consider it for any serious development you might be deluding yourself. OGRE 3d is not tehcnically a ‘game engine’ it is more just a rendering engine, and it requires knowledge of C++ unlike Torque which has it’s own scripting language. OGRE has a lot of tutorials and many many external libs can be used easily with it. Not to mention the number of games made with it is impressive.

The other engine I seriously consider is irrlicht after reading a post about it byt the guy who wrote raknet which I am hoping to use with OGRE.

I recently took a trip to Shanghai and posted some pictures of my trip, it was a lot of fun and got to see some amazing sights. The jet-lag however was brutal and took days to recover from.

In other news SOTNW is a blast of a game and has managed to suck some of my time that otherwise would have been spent on “my” game project that I have been tooling with here and there.

I will be writing more in the coming days as I will be diving back into a lot of new and exciting work.
As a side note: Anime Spinner is still kicking and being added to all the time.. (Make sure to check out the DEMO which is right under the flash block at the top and watch it for a little bit to see how it all works, also if you sign up for an account you can watch the anime full screen)

Second note to self: I need to write up an article about animespinner, the coolest anime project eva! that I built/am building..YOU MUST WATCH THE DEMO (please feel free to comment about it, I need that..) THe article will contain info on the wild world of new internet TV, Otaku craziness and how an idea I had when I was trying to compare manga vrs anime developed into a whole new way to watch anime. (that is NOT done yet)

Now, on to the real news about me: I, after much debate and thought have decided to leave my baby (no, not eve…) socialight, mobile coolness will not longer have me as lead engineer. It took me quite a long time to decide to leave, but in the end I think it will be good. I am leaving on very good terms with my amazing coworkers, who I will miss very much and still plan to hang out with, but it is time for a new venture, and a new road.. I felt a true desire to get back to what I am excellent at, and that is handling linux boxes under intense load and programming php for high-end web sites. After a year of faking it, I have come to the conclusion that “No, I am not a rails guy” I like to built systems where I intimately know every moving piece and I won’t have that with rails, nor any framework.. sadly.

I will miss socialight much. Tomorrow (Friday) is my last day with them before moving on to a new Job on Monday (Internet streaming radio work) and we they are planning a goodbye “go and get drinks” session at 6pm, so if you know us and are in the area, stop by and bid me farewell..

Cheers

First up is the Flytech Dragonfly, which is a remote controlled dragonfly that actually flaps it’s wings, it is pretty cool and we all have had some fun flying it around the office, it is remarkable how you can cease productivity so quickly on the entire floor of a building. Here is an image I took of the box.

Next up is a solar powered bluetooth GPS unit that manages about 100hrs run time from a full charge, and recharges in the sun.

I have spent some time lately looking at various libs to use on a site I want to design, and by design I mean make it a true little piece of genius (and maybe learn something new while we are at it). I am not looking for a prototype replacement, I am looking more for a way to NOT use script.acuo.us, Dojo or the other libs that I thing are interesting, but they just seem to rub me wrong. I checked out the Adobe SPRY lib, decided it was too much other stuff, and eventually I kept finding myself coming back around to YUI which is pretty swanking and basically handles everything that I would have needed five others to bring together all the things I need. It is also split up in the various parts so you only bring in what you need as you need it see some code samples that I found and love, yay

Anyway, the yui grids css is nice for doing grid-based layouts and there are some really nice bookmarklets about that you can use to do your layouts. Just drag these to your firefox quickbar
Translucent Grid overlay

Fixed overlay grid

And speaking of design (something I generally avoid if possible) check out this.

From here.

Given this I found the movie “an inconvenient truth on demand on my cable and watched it, and I really liked it, I thought there was some good stuff there and Gore (who was voted president but screwed by the courts) was clear and had a lot of good points, however, I had some questions about the scientists involved and was wondering just who it was and so I checked out the site, they have some blurbs and quotes taken by scientists but I didn’t know the context of the quotes.

I started poking around looking for information on the “global warming deniers” as I know that any scientist who says anything against the current global warming are summarily and publicly shamed. I found this interesting and some guys in the UK put together a scientists speaking on global warming documentary called “the great global warming swindle” which you can watch online a few places) which is basically the major guys in climatology and climate research at NASA, MIT, Cambridge etc etc.. saying that global warming as we know is more political chaff than fact and that most of the real science is ignored in favor of fantastical things. Much of the current global warming political rhetoric is based on the mistrust the west has with the middle east and the need for a push/incentive to move away from reliance on foreign oil. If you watch one side of the story, you owe yourself a gander at what scientists are saying vs. politicians and journalists.

It is interesting to see both sides if anything, and responsible to yourself.

As always there is disputing sides to every story .. Still it is good for an informed choice.