Bigelow English Teatime

Water: 6oz
Time: 3 min
Milk: 2oz

Verdict: Mild and pleasant, with an oak-like aftertaste. Very agreeable. Takes milk well, giving it a slightly creamier texture. Will definitely drink again.

Trader Joe's English Breakfast

Water: 6oz
Time: 3min
Milk: 2oz

Verdict: Stale. Old. Bitter with very little flavor. Does not take milk well at all; texture becomes watery like an herbal tea. I would consider taking it back to the store had I not paid only $2 for it.

Installing Ubuntu 9.10 desktop w/ software RAID + LVM

I have 4 hard drives in my system and I've been running them with RAID 1 pairs tied together using LVM. The first couple GB of each are set aside for /boot and swap space.

I was running Debian and I wanted to try Ubuntu, but Ubuntu Desktop out-of-box doesn't support this kind of configuration. Ubuntu Server advertises LVM support, but for whatever reason didn't recognize my configuration. I probably could have recreated the same configuration w/ Ubuntu Server's installer, but I didn't want to risk losing my data and then discovering it doesn't actually support it.

Finally after some trial and error I figured out the Ubuntu Alternate distribution has LVM and software RAID support if you run it in "expert" mode. It was a bit of a pain to manually walk it through the installer, but eventually it recognized my existing drive configuration. Definitely not the "friendly" Ubuntu installation experience I was hoping for, but it worked.

When the install was done it left me with a console-only bare-bones install. But since I had the Ubuntu Desktop CD handy, I popped it in the drive and ran:

apt-cdrom add
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

...and away it went.

Carfax "1-owner" doesn't mean 1 owner

I've been car shopping lately and have come across two instances where the car is advertised as a "Carfax 1-owner" vehicle, but the car has actually had two owners. Carfax.com does in fact report 1 owner, but when checking the vehicle with Experian AutoCheck, they report 2 owners. In one case I was actually able to determine Experian was the one that was correct, because the dealership had all of the sales records for the car in the glove box.

Don't trust Carfax.

Comcast buyout of NBC highlights two issues

Coverage I've read of the story focuses on Comcast having an unfair advantage over other ISPs, or vertical integration gains they'll make by joining forces with NBC. But there are two other things I wish were being discussed:

1) Net neutrality. Unfair advantage over other ISPs would be a non-issue if we had decent net neutrality laws in place. There would be no risk of Comcast abusing their power (by slowing down video feeds from other providers).

2) Broadband as a public utility. I strongly believe that broadband should be regulated as a public utility, just like power and water. The fact that Comcast has grown so large that they can drop $14B on another company is unbelievable. They have no competition on cable Internet like the DSL providers do, because cable Internet doesn't use the phone lines--which are regulated as a public utility--so they've been able to overcharge subscribers. If this system were fixed the Comcast purchase of NBC would also be a non-issue.

Google Voice + Gizmo = Fail

The 72 hour "free phone service" experiment has failed. Only about 1 in 3 outgoing calls actually have worked. Call quality is terrible. Frequent drops. Sometimes the line will start doing a "fast busy" in the middle of the conversation. About 1 in 3 times I reboot my ATA it just flat-out can't connect Gizmo.

But the most frustrating thing is Google Voice's "Call" interface doesn't tell you what's going on. It just says "Now connecting...", which would be fine if it actually connected. When there's an error, or your phone never rings, you're left there wondering what the hell happened.

Swine flu H1N1 numbers

New data released last week from the CDC:

• 22M infections in the US so far


• 98,000 hospitalizations


• 3900 deaths

Therefore:

• 0.445% of the population who gets swine flu requires hospitalization, or about 1 in 220


• 0.0177% of people who get swine flu die from it, or about 1 in 5600

Children only:

• 8M infections


• 36,000 hospitalizations


• 540 deaths

Therefore:

• 0.45% of children who get swine flu require hospitalization, or about 1 in 220


• 0.00675% of children who get swine flu die from it, or about 1 in 15,000

I wonder how they come up the 22M and 8M. I was sick with something bad last week. I thought, "no way it's swine flu." But I looked up the symptoms for swine flu, and I actually met the symptoms. (Which are basically, "it's like the flu"). It wasn't until seeing these numbers I thought, "well maybe I did have swine flu". There are 304M people in the US, so 7% of the population has already gotten it.

If you go through the old CDC data it appears the flu typically peaks in February, so we might be a ways from hitting the peak of H1N1.

The Case for a Creator

I stumbled across the video "The Case for a Creator", which claims to be a scientific explanation of why "science" proves the existence of God and creationism. I found it very entertaining on a number of levels.

The video presents science from microbiology to astrobiology. At every step of the way, the science that is presented is used to dispute Darwin's Theory of Evolution. It's comical, laugh-out-loud funny; the leaps in logic are pretty astounding.

But something occurred to me while watching it that I hadn't known how to articulate before: why can't evolution and intelligent design be compatible? If you accept, as the video supposes, that an intelligent designer constructed bacteria that later ("suddenly") turned into complex multi-celled organisms, presumably at the hands of this intelligent designer, why can't you accept the intelligent designer designed evolution?

Simple rules, when combined and run over time with the right initial conditions, create complex and unexpected behaviors. Chaos Theory and Intelligent Design design combine to make Evolution? Any takers?

Just teach your kids God guided evolution and then we can all get along.

Great corporate mantras

I stumbled across this blog entry on the IBM corporate mantra from years-gone-by: THINK. That's it. Just "think".

It got me "think"ing about my experience at Hewlett-Packard when I was in and just-out-of college. I really bought into The HP Way while I was there. I still think about it to this day.

Are these corporate mantras distilling the visions of their respective companies for their employees, or are they cleverly disguised brainwashing exercises designed to trick you into feeling good about your work? While I know people that would say they are the latter, I opt for the former. And I present as a reason for this the argument that they aren't used anymore.

Nowadays, when a company tries to "invent" a new mantra for itself, it's not taken seriously. (See what I just did there?) It might be naive to say that mantras have to come from the founder(s) of the company, but I'm not aware of any modern company that's been able to create a new mantra for itself, one that inspires employees and invokes the greater good. It's got to be built into the fabric of the company.

Will we have another HP or IBM in this country?

Cash for clunkers, what a horrible idea

"This crisis was created by an excess of debt... how should we fix it? MORE DEBT."

On some level that makes sense, but this direct application--encouraging more consumer loans for car purchases--just seems idiotic on so many levels.

Not to mention the environmental impact. The lack of reuse. No recycling of working vehicles. The CARS bill mandates the vehicle be destroyed by the dealer.

When I first learned about this program I spent a great deal of time analyzing the different ways I could trade-in my 20 year-old vehicle to get a new car. I'd love to have a new car, but the more I thought about it, the worse I felt about it. My 1990 Pathfinder is a perfectly workable vehicle. It's got low miles, runs well, and is a pretty comfortable ride. It just seems ludicrous to have the vehicle scrapped.

"But I can get a new car for $4500 off, " I thought...

What if the humane society had a program where they paid you for your old dog, shot it dead, and then gave you a new puppy at a discount?

The cash for clunkers program sets my inner environmental pragmatist against my inner economist. I hate you lawmakers that signed this bill, I hate you. (shakes fist)

And why single-out the automobile industry? There are a lot of other ailing industries that could use their own cash for x program.

Cash for crappers, toilet upgrade program
Cash for consoles, video game upgrade program
Cash for kittens, cat upgrade program (wasn't this an SNL sketch?)

Congratulations Apollo team

You're an inspiration to us all, and proof that we can do anything if we put our minds together. Thank you!

Mixed Feelings on 24Kpwn

The iPhone dev team announced a few days ago that the jailbreak technique they discovered for the 2nd gen iPod touch will likely work on the new iPhone 3G S. At first I was excited to hear about this.. If they can jailbreak it then it's only a matter of time until they publish an unlock and I can go back to T-Mobile prepaid. This would save me over $1000 over the next two years. As an iPhone user this is great news.

But as an iPhone developer, this is very sad news. If you can jailbreak your phone then you can run unsigned code on it, which means you'll be able to pirate games on the 3G S.

Now I'm not someone to whine about piracy. That would make me a massive hypocrite. But growing up in an age when tty spoofing and blue boxes still worked has given me a bit of a nuanced view on piracy (and security systems in general). I don't think it should be illegal for people hack systems in order to gain greater access to them, or to utilize the fruits of their work to break intellectual property laws (which need overhauling anyways). But I do think it should be the right of intellectual property holders and security system developers to do everything they can to prevent people from gaining access to their systems and utilizing their work in new and different ways than they intended.

So back when Apple first launched the App Store it was happy days for everyone. You could run homebrew code unsigned using a variety of pwn tools, but you could also pay for software through the App Store--and this paid software could only be ran on devices that it was digitally signed to run on. But then the hackers figured out a way to effectively unsign signed apps and then you could run a paid application on any phone. I'm not saying this is wrong. It's just sad that Apple's encryption was defeated.

I was hoping the 3G S would turn the tides back in the IP holder's favor, making it impossible--at least for a short time--to run apps that weren't signed specifically for you on your phone. I mean, eventually it needs to happen (duh!) but I was hoping it would be another year, or at least another 6-9 months.

So I have mixed feelings. I wish they would release a baseband exploit that frees us from the tyranny of AT&T and not a jailbreak that allows people to pirate my one dollar game. But I seriously doubt the holders of these exploits will be that generous. :-)

Update: Shoutout to the guys on the iPhone Games Network who discussed this post on a recent podcast. I wouldn't quite say I'm "pleading" with the hacker community to not release a jailbreak (afaik you need the jailbreak in order to apply the baseband exploit anyways), I'm just saying it would be incredibly awesome of them to release a baseband crack that doesn't jailbreak your phone. :-) And quite honestly, I think Apple would feel the same way. They probably hate AT&T more than the rest of us combined--it was pretty obvious in their WWDC talks there was some friction there.

Bork3D Game Engine for iPhone

I've decided to put the foundation I wrote for Anytime Golf up for sale. I'm calling it the Bork3D Game Engine. I think I can carve out a niche in the iPhone engine space for programmer-types with high expectations of the hardware that want a solid foundation on which to build their game. There are other options out there but I believe most game developers look at those and fear (rightfully so, I hear) that those other options won't meet their performance criteria.

Selling a game engine is an interesting thing.  I think the Unity folks have a good business model: they're clearly targeting non-programmer types who want to put together something 3D quickly.  Torque has their iTGB offering that's similar.  There's a good deal of money to be made there.  Unfortunately it doesn't produce great games. (Oh no he didn't!) OK in fairness these engines produce awesome games on PC. They are awesome PC engines. I'm a licensed Torque user and I love it. They're just not mobile engines.

The Bork3D Game Engine was built for mobile platforms. It actually has it's roots in Rude Engine that I wrote for Vector Blaster, and can run on Pocket PC, Symbian and N-Gage in addition to iPhone. But it isn't a complete game engine by any stretch of the imagination. If you want in-game content creation tools and a scripting language please leave. However if you want to build in-game content creation tools and install your favorite scripting language, c'mon in!

So what do you get?

• All the source code


• OpenGL ES abstraction layer


• Debug-rendering API


• Component-oriented game object system


• High-performance static and boned mesh rendering system w/ tool pipeline for 3dsmax and Maya


• Decorator system for rendering billboards


• Texture manager w/ tool pipeline


• Runtime "tweaker" for changing game variables via a web browser


• User interface widgets w/ abstractions for handling iPhone user input


• Font renderer w/ tool pipeline for generating fonts (supports unicode)


• In-game profiler


• Audio system for sound effects and background music


• Integration with the Bullet Physics SDK


• Unit test framework

And what does it cost? I'm selling it for only $49 (if you're indy). Fourty-nine bucks. That's a lot of code for not much. I'm probably crazy. I guess I'm softening as I grow older, considering this is 1/15th what I was selling Rude Engine for a few years ago.

See bork3d.com for more information.

There are also threads on TouchArcade and iphonedevsdk.com about the engine.

Anytime Golf now $0.99

My game Anytime Golf is now only $0.99!

Although getting the word out about the game has been challenging (a lot more challenging than last year with my first iPhone game), folks who have found the game seem to have great things to say about it. Here's a selection:

"A quality game of golf... cracking 3D graphics and realistic physics... hard not to recommend." AppGamer.net

"I am struck by the amazing 3D graphics that you see in this app, but this is more than just a beautiful game... The interface is easy to navigate and the game play is a load of fun... If you love golf you would be missing out big-time if you didn't give Anytime Golf a try." iPhoneAppsFinder.com

"Great 3D graphics and excellent game play make this a very addictive app." iPhoneNess.com

"The holes are really well designed... The physics are superb... The graphics are among the best on the iPhone. A+" App Store reviewer

You can purchase Anytime Golf on the App Store here.

Vector Blaster remix includes more awesomeness; cowbell

Mick Rippon, the guy who wrote the music for my iPhone game, Vector Blaster, just linked me to a remix he's working on of the theme song from the game, "Tomorrow's Mistake". It's teh awesome. And it includes what is essential for just about every musical endeavor: more cowbell!

Link