I've been writing a lot on the go lately. Thus, I have a whole backlog of posts to put up here, including some stuff from Flourish. I'm going to be posting them a bit sporadically as I clean them up, so just be aware the dates I'm posting them on aren't necessarily when I wrote them, in case that becomes confusing.
In the future I'll try to be more timely about posting just after writing.
A bunch of people have sent me links to an article about a programmer who proposed to his girlfriend through a video game, and have noted the similarity to my own proposal using PyStage.
It's not quite the same thing. The system I wrote was an animation system I wrote from scratch, and not a game. This other programmer hacked a pre-existing game. Both are interesting feats in their own ways. (Interestingly enough, the original plan was for me to propose with a full game, but then I realized that the cutscene was complex enough.)
Still, there are certainly similarities in the nerdiness of the proposals, but they're not really surprising. Good programmers take pride in the nerdiness and cleverness of programming, and what better way to propose than to make full use of your craft?
A while ago I gave a summary of the huge number of projects I have going on. I've been struggling to figure out what my primary focus should be.
Well, over the last several days I've been going on a lot of walks. Walking is one of my favorite activities, and this weather is the most perfect time of the year for me to take a stroll. I find that I do my best thinking on walks, and over the last few days I've been walking until I accumulate enough thoughts, then I sit down, pull out my laptop and type them all up.
Well, one of the things on my list of projects in progress was my old comic Lingo, which never really got that far in the first place, but which I've always felt very attached to anyway. But I really couldn't continue developing the comic. First of all, I want to take the comic in a different direction than I was originally planning. Second, I really regretted attaching myself and my friend Jay to the two main characters; it felt both egotistical and limiting. I recently had a nice talk about this with one of my friends, and she gave me her assessment that it's alright for the characters to be based off of real life people but to develop in their own directions.
Well with that in mind I went on another walk today; this time the focus of my thoughts was how to bring Lingo back to life. I sat down on a bench and typed up an outline of the story, and I think what I wrote should keep me going for at least another thirty comics. Afterwards I sketched out some new character designs for some of the forthcoming characters and drew out some layout drafts.
I'm glad to say that not only do I now know where I want to bring the comic, I wrote the script in a way that allows me to continue where I left off (even though I didn't get too far) without having to start from scratch. This is a huge relief, and the decision of what to do here was one of the major roadblocks I was facing.
So, I've decided that for off-work hours projects, Lingo will take number one priority. I'm going to try to turn this into a weekly comic.
By next Friday there will be a new comic up. I hope you look forward to it as much as I do.
This will be my final post regarding the Eee PC for some time to come, I promise. I got Ubuntu installed on the Eee, and I thought I'd give my impressions about that.
First of all, the results from a number of Google queries on how to do the installation pointed me to some interesting and well written articles, but I was having a lot of trouble until I actually visited the Ubuntu wiki. The steps you want to take are definitely these:
But yeah, it was all very, very easy once I found the right resources. And now I've got a real operating system on here! It's way, way better than running the default Xandros install.
The only problem I'm having is how apparent it is that many applications just aren't developed to run at a resolution less than 800x600, and since the model of the Eee that I have has a maximum resolution of 800x480, I sometimes have to to hold down alt to drag windows around.
Here's a list of applications I've tested which work really nicely on the small resolution:
Applications that were unusable:
Other than that, a number of applications had preferences menus or graphical wizards which required a lot of manual positioning to navigate, but nothing too frustrating, and since these are things that one needs to access very rarely, I don't really find myself bothered at all. Now, the next generation of the Eee is both more expensive and more powerful: for 400 bucks (50 dollars more than what I paid) you can get a savvy 1024×600 resolution screen. My suspicion is that this will be good enough for most people, though I think the current system I have is still Good Enough For Me (tm).
Conclusions: Asus has definitely done the right thing here. Sure, they could have shipped with a better distribution, but the fact that this machine actually ships with and was designed for Linux means that I knew I could buy it already knowing all the hardware would work with my operating system and distribution of choice. Since the resolution is good enough and not too unusual, and since it ships with a keyboard and a touchpad, this means that finally Linux users have access to an ultraportable device that isn't trying to reinvent the browser, email clients and feed readers because of limitations or peculiarity of the screen or input. For the most part, you know you can run the distribution and applications that you already know and love. And not reinventing the wheel is a great thing. And despite how great these devices have done for the proliferation of free and open source software, this just can't be said for the Nokia handhelds, the Zaurus, or even a project I'm still a huge fan of, the OpenMoko phone.
So, first post written from the Eee. As usual, I'm using ViewSourceWith with emacsclient to type it up.
There hasn't been a person whom I've shown it to today who hasn't been both impressed with (and jealous of) the device. I must say that it manages to fit expectations totally and completely... hardware-wise anyway.
Yes, the keyoard is still really small and feels pretty cramped. But I'm typing with both hands pretty well and with a fairly low margin of error. There actually are two problems I've been having with the keyboard, but they aren't the ones you'd expect. I end up pressing the enter key a lot when I actually intend to press the apostrophe key. Also, and this is what actually irritates me more than anything, the keyboard doesn't feel totally fastened on the right side very well. It sounds fairly springy when I type on that side in a way that it doesn't on the left. Does anyone else have this problem, I wonder? It's annoying me a lot, especially when I press the arrow keys. Maybe I'd feel less annoyed with it if someone confirmed that this was normal.
The resolution's pretty low, and the screen's pretty tiny. The next version of the device looks like it's going to improve on that greatly, though actually... it's still a lot nicer than I expected even in its present incarnation. You forget just how much of the web is still pretty doable at a tiny width of 800 pixels. Yes, Penny Arcade fits nice and snugly within the browser window, framed so close and perfectly that you'd almost think that maybe they designed their comics with this resolution in mind. And maybe they did. But probably not.
I'm actually rather surprised at how nice the speakers are, as I'm fairly certain they are quite better than my thinkpad's.
So, as for the hardware, its all pretty good excepting that keyboard springy noise, which is getting to me a little. Funny thing is that I had this same issue with another laptop I owned, and it irritated the hell out of me then, too. I'm not sure if this justifies a replacement. I'm thinking about it.
As for software, the version of Linux that's installed on here, some Xandros derivative (which is in turn a derivative of Debian), is pretty lame. Some people have actually complimented the desktop, but I think it's an irritation. Ubuntu, from all I've read, runs just fine on here, and I plan to install that shortly. But why install a stripped-down Linux in the first place? I've found that Ubuntu is really easy to use already, even for people who have had no prior experience with Linux.
That being said, its not terrible, and once you know that the terminal can be started with Ctrl-Alt-T, it's survivable. It comes with OpenOffice, FireFox, and Pidgin, and really for most people that's all they really need. However, I'm not most people, and I'll be installing Ubuntu on this thing shortly.
One last note, which is really a curiosity more than anything. I was a bit surprised to see that the system came with some games, but all of them (with the exception of Sudoku, which is such a lame game it almost doesn't count) are games that have been around since I first started running Linux. I'm not sure if that's a commentary on the state of Open Source gaming or not, but it was kind of disappointing to realize.
Speaking of which, I tried installing Wesnoth on here out of the Xandros repositories and it segfaulted. And that's almost reason enough to switch this thing over to Ubuntu. When I get around to doing that, I'll have more details here.
I'm bubbling with excitement. It just arrived. Oh man oh boy oh man oh boy!
Morgan and I drove by the office and saw two UPS trucks passing to the next house. I parked and bolted out of the car, bubbling with questions about whether any packages for me arrived. The man calmly explained that, yes, he left a few packages inside, as someone (Ric Lee, the company founder) had let him in.
Sure enough, there it was. I've opened it and haven't played with it that much, but let me say that even having seen it before, I didn't realize how small it is until I actually held it in my hands. The keyboard is indeed tiny, but manageable. My WPM was hindered a bit by the size as I tested it out, but its definitely doable. Overall, the design feels totally solid. My only regret is that I got a white one. (White? I always prefer black technology, or at least something cool like deep blue.) That's OK, I have a bunch of python stickers from PyCon that I'll plaster it with. The Linux distribution it ships with has a very Palm OS-like desktop by default, which is pretty lame, but since I can install Ubuntu, I'm happy.
Now I'm off to meet Doug Napoleone to talk about next year's PyCon site. I might be volunteering more this time around. We'll see how things go.
More impressions later as I continue to play with this thing.
I stayed late at work today. No, I mean really late. I guess I felt bad about how many times I pressed refresh on the UPS tracking page today waiting for that damn laptop.
And what the hell did I do at work staying so late? Oh, watching goddamn anime intarwebs memes. What the hell is wrong with me?
Well, at least tomorrow should be interesting. The Eee will arrive, and I'll be meeting a couple of people from PyCon.
A friend and former coworker pointed out that my blog's RSS feed is still pointing to http://example.com.
I'm going to fix it as soon as I get off of work today. Like, the moment I get off.
I decided after all to give that lightning talk on PyStage at PyCon. I planned on using the same talk I did at ChiPy, just significantly shorter. I did not plan on a key getting stuck on my keyboard halfway through the talk, essentially grinding it to a halt.
Well, a number of people told me that I recovered really well by turning it into a humorous situation. I ended up smacking the heck out of my old T23 Thinkpad trying to find which key was stuck. Heck, it might have been for the best, for at least it ended up forcing me to finish my talk in a reasonable amount of time. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the video of it go up on YouTube: that way I'll have one video where I did really well and where the concept was well received, and another where I'm literally pounding the keyboard with my fist to humorous effect. Too bad the former was in front of the 60 or so people at ChiPy and the latter was in front of the 1000 or so people at PyCon.
Even so, the whole situation was embarrassing, and built upon a number of other frustrations I've had with that laptop: broken wireless and a video card for which I haven't been able to figure out how to get direct rendering with OpenGL. These things have made a number of frustrations for me, particularly at nerd events like ChiPy, PyCon, or even while sprinting at PyWeek, and in an impulsive moment I made a significant financial decision (without consulting my fiance): I bought an Eee PC.
There were a lot of people with these things at PyCon, and I found them appealing to me on a number of different levels:
I've been interested in a super small computer with working wireless for a long time. I don't really need or want a laptop that can replace my desktop, as I enjoy doing most of my work on a machine that's persistently on. This is why I've invested money into the old Zaurus I bought several years ago. Unfortunately, I never got the networking on it working well (that might have been partly due to my inexperience with networking at the time) and thus was never able to get the environment to the state that I wanted it in. Also, the keyboard on it was fairly decent for what it was, but it wasn't a real keyboard. This thing has a real keyboard.
The only thing I feel bad about with purchasing this device is that I feel like it distracts from the One Laptop Per Child project. Unfortunately, neither the Give One Get One nor the developer programs are running right now, so I don't think its possible for me to get ahold of one before Flourish.
There's also a possibility that I won't end up achieving what I want with it, but I'm quite optimistic. If nothing else, at least I'll be able to finally have a machine with working wireless access, which seems pretty critical for a geek in modern society.
In the meanwhile I'm refreshing the UPS shipping page constantly. It's scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which is almost a shame because we're off of work tomorrow and I had it ship to the office. Well, maybe I can drive to the UPS store myself to pick it up, because honestly tomorrow can't come soon enough.
Pycon, day one! (Or that is, day one if you didn't attend tutorials yesterday.) Best day of my life? Well, no. One of the best days of my life? Oh yes, certainly.
Anyway, summary is:
Also, as to whether or not I'm giving a talk tomorrow, I'm not really sure. I signed up, but I signed up in the special first-grabs sponsor talk sheet, and I think I might have done so too late. So not sure if I'm going to get to speak, but I'm preparing anyway.
Oh hey, and if you are there, stop by Imaginary Landscape's booth in the break sessions! I'll probably be around.
