Pug’s Place

I nearly killed an old man while riding my bike from class today. This isn’t just any simple near-homicide, no sir. I nearly killed this old man from 10 yards away.

I had just left the computer science building and was rounding the corner between Marston and the nearby pond, doing a brisk walking pace on my bike (In other words, not very fast). As normal, people are trafficking through this area walking generally perpendicular to my direction of motion, crossing in front of me. So I’m coasting with light hands on my breaks planning my route between people. Before me but not quite straight ahead, around 10 yards away, an old man turned his head and caught sight of me. Upon doing so his face grew contorted in terror, he stopped mid-stride and made a shuffling hop out of my way which resulted in a stumble and yet another small hop to recover. He was near to falling down at every stage of this, that he kept his balance was somewhat amazing. I would not have been surprised if he had a heart attack from the experience as he was definitely an old man.

Let me reiterate that I was 10 yards away and moving at a brisk walking pace, less than the speed of Sam. He not only overestimated my forward speed, he grossly overestimated it. I, of course, plotted a course through the crowd which kept a wide berth between us and tried to ignore his scowls. He overestimated and overreacted in what would have been a comic manner had he not been at risk of acute myocardial infarction.

My analysis of the situation indicates a 96% probability that I was without fault. I keep my distance between myself and the pedestrians, I don’t speed through crowded areas and I don’t run down old men. But even so, that man thought differently. That makes this worth a post.

So I bought another monitor last week. It arrived today, a ViewSonic VX2025wm 20.1″ LCD monitor with a 1680×1050 native resolution. I’ve paired this with my present 17″ monitor to great success, as anticipated. Their vertical screen sizes are nearly identical despite the new monitor’s large advertised size, since the new monitor is much wider than a normal sort of monitor. So sitting next to one another I have effectively a 2960×1050 resolution screen, as displayed in the picture. Oh, and to forestall the inevitable question: Yes, it’s possible to display many 3D games across both screens. No, it’s not recommended on an older GeForce 4 video card like mine.
Using multiple monitors on a single computer may be a new concept to a few of my readers but the rationale is simple: desktop space is king. If I can have source code (without lines wrapping around) displayed on one monitor while documentation is displayed on the other monitor, I don’t have to keep switching between desktops to lookup how to use methods or (worse yet) what it actually is I’m supposed to be accomplishing. Thus, higher throughput. It’s also nice to be able to show wide-screen movies with minimal black banding. Note that a wide-screen computer monitor is still not as wide as an anamorphic wide-screen, 1.6:1 instead of 2.4:1, but it’s a lot closer than a standard monitor of 1.25:1. Close enough to make the Bridge of Kazad-dûm all the more exciting when I was testing The Fellowship of the Ring earlier today.

Anyway, this was a gloat post since a second monitor like this has been on my “To Buy” list since I had to give up my dual-headed setup at home upon leaving for UF. Forgive me, kind readers. I’ll return to meaningless drivel with my next post I swear!

Similar to Jim Thompson here, CitizenShift of Canada has asked for permission to play my video “What Is Free Culture” at their “Autonomous Media Night” in Montréal on 3 May 2006. Unlike Jim, I don’t mind them playing my short, despite it’s obvious flaws in structure in the last 70 seconds.

(According to the request email, CitizenShift is “a space for independent and emerging media makers offering a unique on-line platform for the discussion of important social issues through video, audio, images and text.”)

Spring Break was fun, but recapping some of the adventures therein belongs in a different post. Of course the old adage that ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ may be applicable, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll mention the bar fight in Margaritaville at 1 am. Hmm.

I’ve spent much too much time doing homework and project-work this week and not nearly enough time playing Sid Meier’s “Pirates!” (which is, by the way, awesome) and coding on Gpremacy. More later.

Gpremacy
I spent most of this week’s free time working on Gpremacy. I’ve implemented Blind Bidding and Turn Randomization, the last major features standing in the way of Gpremacy being a really playable game. The changes are in CVS but they are not ready for serious use yet. For some reason the server-side logic keeps failing at keeping track of who’s playing when. There has to be a subtle problem in the StateManager class. It’s not that big of a class and its job is pretty darn straight-forward, so I’m perplexed at where the error lies. I intended to spend this morning line-by-line debugging it but I was distracted by E.

When I get back from my Spring Break I’ll either do the debugging or simply re-implement the class and see if I get it right next time.

On the plus side, the client code keeps getting better and better. I’ve fixed a number of holes which would cause clients to lock up when connecting to the server. In fact, the only bug I’ve found in the last few days regarding that is so weird that it don’t even throw a useful exception - it just deadlocks. Anyway, I’ll track that one down once I get the Blind Bidding (and probably Loans) fully working.

I’m gearing up to make a serious release very soon - Loans won’t take long at all, and once they’re out of the way the only things not implemented will be Winning Conditions (easy), L-Sat Clashes, Orbital Nuclear Bursts and Amphibious Warfare. Amazingly, these things should all be rather simple, especially in comparison to the Blind Bidding (which required a rewrite of a bunch of the game state management). By “serious release” I mean the following:

• Windows Installer
• Linux Installer (using Autopackage)
• Straight binary (just in case)
• User Manual (already partly written!)
• Turn walk-through (not yet written)
• New website (partly done)
• Developer documentation (just beginning)

I’m also going to bump up to a proper version number this time - the next release will be 0.4.0.

It’s going to be good, very good.

Spring Break

But before I can finish that up, I’ll be heading off to Phoenix and Las Vegas for Spring Break. Yes, Vegas again — we’ll see if Chris can capture another wacky image of me in front of the Paris casino. I’m sure I’ll still be checking my email and cell phone, so you’ll still be able to get in touch with me, just not as quickly.

Finally
My final project for Concurrent Programming is to implement a multiplayer Internet Boggle game using Java. I wrote up a frighteningly complete UML diagram and functionality outline during class today so I think I can say that I’ve a good head start. Don’t worry folks, you’ll get to play this one too.

I anticipate becoming very good at Boggle before this semester is complete…

Today was the third of my three midterms, this one for CEN 5540: Networking Security. For this exam we were allowed a double-sided letter-sized page of notes, which is somewhat nice since the material has so many names and methods discussed.

I met with some classmates in the lab a few hours before the exam. Most of them spent most of that time cramming ever more information into their crib sheets, using 4 and 6 point fonts and eliminating all white-space. I, too, was adding information to my crib sheet but I’ve never been good at making these things - they’re too much like outlines, and those of you with whom I went to high school know that I outlined only at a very general level. So after I filled 80% of the front side of my sheet with 12pt font, I decided to take up the remaining room with something a little more entertaining.

My associates thought I was mad, wasting precious crib-sheet space like that.

I never had to look at my sheet during the exam, let alone would I have had time to do so. 50 minutes to answer all of those questions left no time for searching through notes. Thus I have proven my choice of adding Snoopy as a vital note on Computer Security to be a good choice indeed.