metroid prime 3, first impressions

August 28, 2007  🎲 👾

I’ve now logged just about exactly one hour of gameplay on Metroid Prime 3. It looks really good. I’m still getting used to the controls, so I won’t comment on those. The first thing that really bugged me, though, is the NPCs. In the first few minutes, Samus docks her ship with a Galactic Federation warship and makes her way to the bridge. On her way, she can talk to members of the crew. A few said, “Aren’t you Samus Aran? It’s an honor to meet you.” Awesome. More of them, however, said things like, “I can’t be bothered with you, I’m busy” or, “this job requires my full concentration.”

new mime::lite

August 28, 2007  🐫 🧑🏽‍💻

MIME::Lite is, in my opinion, the worst of the popular email object modules. It’s buggy, has a lousy interface, and just does awful things. I’d go so far as to say that the number one mistake I see in new email modules is a reliance on MIME::Lite instead of Mail::Message or Email::MIME.

open flash chart puttering

August 28, 2007  🧑🏽‍💻

A few weeks ago, I found Open Flash Chart and put it in my list of things to look at. It’s pretty slick-looking. What I found, though, is that the helper libraries are sort of wretchedly interfaced. Basically, they all output data files that the flash plugin uses to build charts.

recent video game playing

August 27, 2007  🎲 👾

I’d stopped (or at least drastically reduced) my video game playing after Martha was born until around my birthday. I got a bunch of new games, then, and I’ve been playing a lot more. I already wrote about Super Paper Mario, which started out fantastic and then fizzled.

we (by zamyatin)

August 26, 2007

I don’t recall where I saw the recommendation, but someone or something had strongly suggested that I read “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I put it on my wish list, Gloria gave it to me for my birthday, and I read it last week. It was good, although I’m not sure what to make of it, in the end.

please turn to your right and thank the cpan tester there

August 21, 2007  🐫

Earlier today, I wrote about a problem I’d seen reported via CPAN testers. A test was failing on Cygwin, probably because of Cygwin being weird. As expected, I was able to talk to one of the intrepid CPAN smokebot operators, ask for help, and get the problem resolved very quickly.

making the switch to git (pt. 2)

August 12, 2007  🔀

I used to keep a lot of personal stuff in ~/svn, like my RPG notes, dotfiles for various apps, and some of the stupid little things I stick in ~/bin. I converted that to git about a month ago, and it went just fine. A little later, John and I decided we’d switch svn.codesimply.com to git, and I ran into an annoying problem.