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| Vollkorn, by Friedrich Althausen |
Installation on Blogger is straightforward if you’re up for Edit HTML (and the consequences of forking your template). It would be pretty silly, though, if we didn’t make it a bit easier one of these days…
Monday, May 24
New Fonty Goodness
Installation on Blogger is straightforward if you’re up for Edit HTML (and the consequences of forking your template). It would be pretty silly, though, if we didn’t make it a bit easier one of these days…
Tuesday, May 11
Not blogging on account of iPad
I posted recently about my disappointment in the available iPad-compatible blogging solutions. This has hampered my own blogging in two significant ways:
This isn't anything official, and I might not even finish it, but for now it's been a fun way to develop Cocoa Touch skills and get some experience in engineering a client app in something other than JavaScript or GWT.
Things I like:
Things I miss:
Things that are annoying:
Things I couldn't live without:
- Since the iPad is still the shiny fun toy I want to play with, I haven't wanted to pull out my laptop in order to blog.
- I've been spending a good deal of time and attention trying to rectify the problem by building a native client of my own.
This isn't anything official, and I might not even finish it, but for now it's been a fun way to develop Cocoa Touch skills and get some experience in engineering a client app in something other than JavaScript or GWT.
Things I like:
- I can make apps that run on the iPad, which is, as previously noted, shiny.
- The challenge of figuring out a new system and getting it to work.
Things I miss:
- Java, Eclipse, and static analysis. The tools available for Java just seem to be able to do more: easier (in some cases real-time) refactoring, auto-filling of methods (e.g. to satisfy an interface), and syntax highlighting of uses and errors come to mind.
- Open source everywhere. When a library is behaving curiously, I'm used to being able to Control-click in and poke around to see how it's doing things. Not so with Cocoa, and I've already been bitten by two bugs in the frameworks that have required trial-and-error workarounds.
Things that are annoying:
- Indentation to line up colons. Really? The aesthetic value of this escapes me, especially when coupled with the maintenance hassle.
- Xcode groups not matching the filesystem. More maintenance. If decoupling these is even ever desirable it should be an option, not the default.
- Categories. I haven't seen how these are particularly useful in practice, and currently seem to do little more than fill up the auto-complete menu with random, out-of-context methods.
- The thesaurus. Maybe I'm just not used to the terminology, but the API authors like to use verbs that are a bit on the flowery side, which keeps me from ever remembering them. Modal views are not "shown" or "hidden," but "presented" and "dismissed." Okay, it has more character, but at a not-insignificant learning cost.
Things I couldn't live without:
- Stack Overflow. 'Nuff said.
Monday, April 19
Weekend Gaming: For Sale, BSG, ME2, &tc.
Some friends were in town for a wedding, and we got a fair amount of gaming done. Here are some capsule highlights:
In a blaze of foresight, I brought Guillotine along on our trip to Providence to see the Circle finale. We had about an hour to kill after dinner, so we got in three games. Guillotine was ideal because we had played it at PAX East last month, so there was no learning curve. Nevertheless, I’m starting to slightly sour on the game. I wish there was either more strategy or more of a “take that” element to the mechanics. With four players, you certainly can’t plan ahead to your next turn. It’s also pretty hard to set up an opponent to get a bad noble, since the chances that they’ll have a card that weasels out of it is pretty high.
On Sunday, I introduced the King of Fillers, For Sale, to universally positive reactions. I had only played it once before, but now I’m definitely going to push it harder. For such a short, simple game there’s a ton going on. I love how the property buying in the first round has such a direct, intense consequence for how the second round will play out, but, with clever play and good reading of your opponents, you can still overcome your previous mistakes. This keeps everyone fully engaged through the selling phase.
We played our first game of Battlestar Galactica, a game that both couples had sitting on a shelf for a long time, waiting for enough people and enough time. It’s a game that certainly looks more complicated than it ends up being, so I feel good about introducing others to it, especially if they’re hooked by the theme. We didn’t have too much in the way of accusations, as we uncovered the Cylon pretty quickly. Unfortunately, that Cylon was president Baltar, who held on to his office from the Brig, and was able to do quite a bit of damage before we were able to elect the VP to take over. BSG seems like it will only get better with more plays and more familiarity. I also can see how a fifth person would add a lot.
In the realm of video games, we played a bit of 4-player New Super Mario Brothers Wii. The getting in each others’ way was both amusing and annoying, but what was really frustrating was getting through castle levels with anyone surviving. I remember this game got universally positive reviews, especially with four people, but it’s clear to me that those reviewers were all much better at Mario than we were.
On my own I’ve been playing Mass Effect 2. Its siren song pulled me away from my resolve to finish Dragon Age: Origins, and I couldn’t be happier. ME2’s improvements as a shooter are more than welcome, and I love getting back into role-playing my character.
In a blaze of foresight, I brought Guillotine along on our trip to Providence to see the Circle finale. We had about an hour to kill after dinner, so we got in three games. Guillotine was ideal because we had played it at PAX East last month, so there was no learning curve. Nevertheless, I’m starting to slightly sour on the game. I wish there was either more strategy or more of a “take that” element to the mechanics. With four players, you certainly can’t plan ahead to your next turn. It’s also pretty hard to set up an opponent to get a bad noble, since the chances that they’ll have a card that weasels out of it is pretty high.
On Sunday, I introduced the King of Fillers, For Sale, to universally positive reactions. I had only played it once before, but now I’m definitely going to push it harder. For such a short, simple game there’s a ton going on. I love how the property buying in the first round has such a direct, intense consequence for how the second round will play out, but, with clever play and good reading of your opponents, you can still overcome your previous mistakes. This keeps everyone fully engaged through the selling phase.
We played our first game of Battlestar Galactica, a game that both couples had sitting on a shelf for a long time, waiting for enough people and enough time. It’s a game that certainly looks more complicated than it ends up being, so I feel good about introducing others to it, especially if they’re hooked by the theme. We didn’t have too much in the way of accusations, as we uncovered the Cylon pretty quickly. Unfortunately, that Cylon was president Baltar, who held on to his office from the Brig, and was able to do quite a bit of damage before we were able to elect the VP to take over. BSG seems like it will only get better with more plays and more familiarity. I also can see how a fifth person would add a lot.
In the realm of video games, we played a bit of 4-player New Super Mario Brothers Wii. The getting in each others’ way was both amusing and annoying, but what was really frustrating was getting through castle levels with anyone surviving. I remember this game got universally positive reviews, especially with four people, but it’s clear to me that those reviewers were all much better at Mario than we were.
On my own I’ve been playing Mass Effect 2. Its siren song pulled me away from my resolve to finish Dragon Age: Origins, and I couldn’t be happier. ME2’s improvements as a shooter are more than welcome, and I love getting back into role-playing my character.
Tuesday, April 13
The Dark Knight / Toy Story Trailer
Apparently movie trailer mashups is a thing. This one is absolutely brilliant:
Saturday, April 10
It's from space, and also the future
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