Smallhouse Log

Thursday

And Milleverbium! One thousand words, one picture, one hundred lines of bug-free code (and associated documentation), or one hundred lines of decent poetry. Or some combination, at the appropriate exchange rates.

Wary of my past failures (and how ridiculously intense a thousand words a day is as a goal), I think I'll ramp into it gradually. Say, two hundred each day for the first week, and up the quota by another hundred each week. Which should take me eight weeks to get up to a proper thousand? That seems possible?

Now to just set a start date.

Wednesday, sixth week after Epiphany
"It is our duty as a people to deal with bell-related issues." -Ana, 02/16/2011

The search for alternate calendars continues. Suggestions are welcome.

Projects are afoot. Doing taxes. Unpacking, packing. Diverf seamster operations. And possibly... the Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge. I've got some ideas brewing (admittedly, fueled by discussions on the Brogue forums). And it looks like I totally missed Hourly Comics Day this year? I've been busy. But not busy with projects. But now I will be. Maybe.

One of my projects is to make a database (with corresponding web interface) to keep track of my projects.

third Sunday after Epiphany

I went looking on my wife's bookshelves for Alice in Wonderland, and ended up with Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process. Hmm.

The overall thesis seems to be that the creative forces are not something inherently occluded by the mind, but rather that they can, and should be, brought under conscious control.

fourth day of Christmas

I planned to keep myself amused these twelve days by working on that set of projects codenamed "Teacup", the descendent of the bears/rabbits/genetics/ecosystem sim/games that I've been iterating for the past two years. The most recent iteration was begun in the early summer, with the intent that I would write very organized, well documented code.

Well, in that regard, it is half-successful. I recently hit a problem and had to go over old code. Unfortunately, the lack of documentation removed all the benefits of my rigorously organized code; Fortunately, the rigorous organization and clarity of my code compensated for my lack of documentation and comments.

Now that the roadblock is fixed, I find myself once more apathetic about the larger problem: lack of documentation.

Wednesday, third week of Advent

Irony: Knowing my computer is infected, I am googling for AVG anti-virus. One of the viruses present, however, has the delightful effect of redirecting hyperlinks (especially Google search results) to different pages, presumable for PPC ad revenue. The page the virus redirected me to? A purchase page for McAfee anti-virus.

That's right. McAfee has contracted ads with someone who uses viruses to up PPC traffic. Hilarious.

NB: I did, infact, get the AV I wanted and clear up Asbestos.

Monday

Employed, and started work. As a contractor (much computer professional work being on a contractor basis), I don't get paid for training, but I've managed to do some actual work. More exciting, I've been working more on my game project, the one with the bears and rabbits. I want to call it Teacup, for some reason. Right now I also think of it as the Cursed Fighter, not because of any bad luck —though the last two days have been a storm of (eventually successful) testing, debugging, and re-writing— but because I'm trying to switch from using standard out to curses. I also feel productive, because in a whirlwind of success, Claire and I knocked out the last two gold trophies that had been eluding us on 150cc in Double Dash, and then took the Gold in the All Cup on a more relaxed 100. Yeah, more video game blather.

But this morning, I'm thinking about all my old ZZT games, and giving them a new Internet home here at Smallhouse, or a subsite for Akim Productions. Maybe adding the prototype 'Terminal Fighter' game. (The name came after 'Cursed Fighter', I don't know what I'll do if I decide to switch to PyGame for display again.)