Everything Update For Josh

• Parallels - I installed Parallels the other day on my iMac and I have to say, its a really impressive product. Very fast, clean interface, works great. I have XP running in it for Quicken and eventually .NET development, and its working great. The image files aren't too big either. My only complaint so far is that there isn't an easy way via the interface to create a snapshot of a virtual machine (ie a copy of its current state for backup purposes). I eventually made one by hand by copying the image files but a nice interface would have been nice. My only other glitch, and this is very minor, is that with dual monitors, the transition effects when switching between OSs blinks a bit and isn't smooth. All well ;). Oh, and once you install the Parallels tools in XP, you can move your mouse straight into it and out without clicking or anything and it will send the signals correctly. That plus clipboard integration is pretty nice.
  
• Quicken - I installed this as I said above. Works well, I am still trying to get all my accounts setup correctly but I am happy. It did crash the first time I ran it (being the first program installed in XP, i had to laugh) but it has worked fine since.
  
• SuperDuper - My final installation of the past weekend, this backup software is working out well. I broke down and paid for the "full" version since I really liked it and it unlocked the "smart updates" for your backup partition and in-app scheduling. Now I have it setup to make a smart backup once a week thats fully bootable. A nice bit of insurance.
  
• Game Night - wed night was a Sark Game Night, we played Call of Duty at the Sark office. Fun times. I am pretty sure I was #1 (or 2) in every game so that was cool. With this, plus last week's Sark stuff and some large meetings this week I have gotten several lunches and dinners paid for recently. :-D
  
• Moms weekend - this past weekend my mom and Em's mom made their way into town to visit. Other than some freak snow showers and a whirlwinds weekend, I think everyone had a great time. Some of the highlights were showing the moms JungleJims (they were both pretty much awe struck by the time they made it to the bakery, which is less than half the store), a good but not quite what we expected dinner at the Glendale Pub, some good relaxing and talking, and a great breakfast at the Original Pancake House. I had some GREAT sourdough pancakes BTW.
  
• Em Test - Em took the Praxis this past weekend and thinks she did well. Not much left besides graduation!
  
• Taxes - This weekend I gotta finish up our taxes. While I wouldn't suggest it just for the tax break, spending a ton of money on tuition results in a nice tax credit. Lots of debt, but a nice tax credit.
  
• Broomball double header - Last two weeks we have had broomball double headers. First time we won both games, second time we lost both. 2/4 ain't too bad! :) Another game at 4 this week. Wish me luck.
  
• work - work has been kinda crazy this week. Without going into too much detail, we ended our previous "Sprint" last week and had a large demo of our current progress on Monday that went very well. On Tuesday I had meetings pretty much all day to discuss the things that went well/wrong in the last sprint, figure out what we want to do this sprint and plan for those things. The rest of the week had me working to understand my new integration point (integrating the billing system with the system that stores policy information, which happened to be installed before I was born ;) ) and hashing out the basic design of my parts in conjunction with a coworker. This is looking to be a work filled sprint, but at the end we will have the majority of the system in place which is exciting. Also, we are working to get end-t0-end testing in place for our integration points which may mean I will be able to actually call up the a voice response system and test my code from last sprint which would be cool.
  
• sark conf call - The Sark/Sogeti buyout officially happened on March 1st, so technically I now work for Sogeti US. I have been getting bits and pieces of information and details as they become available but still don't have a complete picture of what this will mean for the future. If I hear anything crazy I will post, don't worry :) We had a national conf. call on wed that was a lot of biz jargon and fluff, but at least gave us some names and the idea that things were moving forward. I should be getting benefit and policy info in the mail sometime this week....hopefully.
  
• go carts, happy hour - last week we had our yearly Sark monthly meeting at the indoor competition racing place. 30+ MPH go-karts == fun even if my side hurt all the next two days from one bad turn into a wall. I did great, except for 4 penalties. But one wasn't my fault I swear! I though I had gotten one so I went into the pit area behind another guy, but when the guy saw me he just looked at me strange and told me to go ahead. Then on my next lap a diff official-guy gave me a penalty for going in the pit without a reason! You believe that crap!? ;)
  
• seega - this project has stalled after its initial momentum, but I am hoping to work on it some this weekend. I have been just too buzy at work. plus...
  
• photessera - I have been working some on this project. I came up with what I think is a more efficient design to keep the memory footprint down, but its hinges on my ability to find/make a PNG encoder that can create a file via streaming input (so that the entire original image need not be in memory). I have been reading the PNG spec and about the DEFLATE algorithm but fear that I will need 2 passes over the data to create the file. I MAY be able to get away with a single pass but I will have to do some creative sampling prior or concede that the compression won't be at its best. I am really considering throwing something together this weekend so that I can run some tests on the tradeoffs of time/memory footprint/number and amount of HD read & writes/complexity/resulting compression. Its actually a very interesting problem.
  
• root beer - I got a new kind of root beer from JJs when we went last weekend. I will post a review whenever I get a chance to upload the pics
• SCDJWS - my studying has been stalled with the above, but its moving along. Actually I have having to pick up a number of the secondary technologies in my current project which should be helpful.
• Pics - I took some decent pics the other day, but haven't put them on the web yet. When I do there will be a post.
• Noah's Arc in our backyard - the other morning I was getting ready and was looking out the window at our porch at the various birds which were enjoying the fresh birdseed I had put out. Your normal bunch of misc small birds flying around. Then I saw our resident squirrel come by, but with a friend, and got to watch him try his best to reach the location of our bird feeder (he eventually did get it, he is quite the acrobat). To go along with the pair of squirrels, we currently have a pair of Red Bellied Woodpeckers, Cardinals, and Blue Jays flying around. I actually got to see all 4 pairs in a half hour time span the other day. It was pretty cool.
  

Coding...

I finally pushed some initial code for Photessera up. Just some interfaces but at least its a start. I want to try a more TDD approach when writing it, so things may progress slowly. Also I am still trying to decide how much modularity I want to give it (e.g. I know I will want to test various decision and image building algorithms but I am not sure if they will just be during testing or if they will be options in the final app.) Hopefully I will decide on something soon.

...

I also pushed a rather large update (given the size of the project) today for Mag-Games. I had done a fair bit and had the latest code at work as of Friday but our network went flaky about quiting time, so evidently the commit didn't go through. But its there now. I had some trouble with deleting files and re-adding them (was using eclipse tool to generate file which was easier than modifying it by hand). I will chalk it up to inexperience with Subversion and/or Subclipse but I couldn't find a way to delete it, recreate it and have it keep the info. All well. Its still there now and didn't contain anything really worth while previously.

If I get a chance to write up the base/utility class unit tests ... I can move the project several point releases forward. Yeah its not TDD but at least I am trying.

...

Also, for anyone who might read this and not MFC, I posted an open question here which I would love suggestions for.

Mag-Games ... Making Progress

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I have been making steady progress on my Mag-Games project since announcing it to the world. If you check out the Google code page you can see that a few things have been added to the wiki (much more to come when I have time), I have been playing around with the issue tracking which isn't quite up to date anymore, and I have been writing a fair amount of code (you can check it out via a Subversion client or view it online).

Release 1.0 (Working game engine with a fully working Seega game w/ AI) should easily be made by the end of the month in keeping with my intended 1-a-month plan. So far I have been working mainly on the game engine and laying the framework for the future games. Yesterday and today I really started working on the Seega game rules and Alex has started working on the visual interface code. The main things left are the Seega interface, a small amount of game logic, and the game loader along with writing some better tests for each portion.

I am planning on uploading a cross-platform full download with instruction, basic help, and documentation when release 1.0 is ready. If you do try and checkout the code, know that its written in Java 1.5 with most of the files needed to slide it right into Eclipse (I recommend the Subclipse plug-in if your going that route). However, I am also trying to keep a complete Ant build file up to date for anyone not wanting to use Eclipse. All of the dependencies other than the JDK 1.5 libraries should be found in the repository. As of today, there isn't much you can run ... but you can get a feel for how its structured and try and find problems with my code ;)

All in all I am really happy with how it is going. Its nice to have one of my pet projects actually getting somewhere. I encourage any and all of you who are computer-inclined to check out what I have done so far and let me know what you think. If you find some crap code, bad design, great design, or have any suggestions or question please send them my way. I would love to discuss the app's design and implementation with you. Since the overall program is decently simple with a fair bit of abstraction built in, I hope to be able to easily add on and change out parts as I have time to refine them or give them new features.

On a similar note, I haven't had time to put up and re-organize the code for my Photo Mosaic (Photessera) software, but I swear I will soon.

Update w/o Sark news

[I meant to post this yesterday before leaving work, but got tied up]

I was planning on having my next post be about the Sark/Sogeti news, but I haven't gotten much concrete information yet and there are a few other things I wanted to post ... so here they are:

Darts starts back up tonight with a match at 7:30. I am psyched b/c the matches are always a lot of fun and I will get a chance to see some Sark's I don't normally see. Plus with today's news, there will be plenty to talk about. Only downside is that Em has class tonight so she won't be getting back home until when I have to leave. Good thing she loves me :) [EDIT: we won!!! 11-4. Granted it took forever and was WAY WAY smoky, but we WON!]

This weekend is a Sark outing to go Tubing at PerfectNorth which should be a lot of fun .... and our second broomball game of the season. We "lost" our last game but only b/c of a sexist rule (girl goals count as 2 points). We scored and they scored once, so I say we tied. Goal for this week, is to score more points than the other team so there is no confusion.

Tuesday we got a "big" snow storm across the tri-state area. Pretty much shutdown things for the night. GAIC was kind enough to close their downtown businesses so that people could go home early (granted that just meant sitting in traffic earlier in the day, but it was a sound idea). So I got to leave around 2pm and got to sit in traffic for the next 1.5+ hours. All well, a few guys I work with had 2+ hour commutes home and lived much closer than me. It was the first time I had the "new" Sonata in the snow and it handled well. No sliding but it took it a second or 2 to catch when starting from a standstill. I can't complain. [Edit: I heard up-state NY got over 5' of snow over the past couple days ... makes our 6 inches seem pretty lame ;) ]

I have started two Google Code Projects, mag-games and photessera, to allow others to see my code and hopefully get some good input on the projects. I am currently in the process of putting up the code I have so far, organizing what I have, and getting some project info up in the wiki. If anyone has any suggestions, comments, ideas, or wants to help out ... please let me know. :) I will post small updates as I get things uploaded or I make some progress on the projects, but you can check their pages for more up-to-date info.

Site Stats & Seega Examples

First, yesterday I noticed several unusual user locations for this blog ... one from Oslo - Norway, and one from somewhere in Venezuela. And today there were hits from China and Brazil.

Normally my recent user map shows various hits from all over the US but clustering in the Ohio/NE area, around STL and northern CA. All of which make sense either by location or by ISP (its funny to see where some ISPs drop off their data. Some of the guys reading for WPAFB's traffic is coming out of NY (or the domain is at least registered there)).

It took me a few minutes to realize that the other day I had accidentally made my blog "public" on Blogger which explains the new traffic. I am not sure if I will turn that off again (since my blog doesn't have a large intended audience or not). Possibly if the extra traffic gets to be a decent perfect.

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Chaz, hopefully this will help with the Seega captures:

1. Empty standard board, 5x5, with the "safe" center square highlighted
2. A possible full board (12 pieces each, middle square is always left empty to start)
3. If blue moves down, (as the arrow suggests) both red would be captured
4. If blue moves down,he is still safe since he moved between the two red
5. If blue moves up, nothing happens b/c there is a gap to the left before the next blue. if he moves left then he captures all three reds
6. if blue moves up, he captures the 2 outside reds. The center red is on the safe square and can not be captured, however he can be part of a string that gets captured.

[EDIT: an explanation of how the board gets setup and the first move is in the comments]

Game Challenge - February - Seega

Background: I was given a calendar for Christmas that is magnetic and has a different small tile game each month along with directions and small magnetic pieces which I have brought with me to work. The games have fairly simple rules but at surprisingly complex in their game play.

Personal Challenge: See how much of the game I can code during that month including some sort of UI and if it is a 2 player game (most are) the UI should enable to players to play against eachother or one player against the computer. Code should be posted at least once a week to show progress and to be discussed with anyone who cares to think about it. Anyone else who wishes to make a suggestion, describe a solution, make up their own version or take on my AI is welcome to do so.

Professional / Personal Goals of Challenge: To force myself to think about new problems, domains, etc and to apply good design patterns and algorithms to solve them.

:: February ::
Seega

• 2 players
• 12 pieces each
• 5x5 grid
• pieces can be moved LRUD but not diagonally
  
• capture your opponents pieces by "enclosing" them on both sides with your pieces
• if there are gaps, no pieces are captures
• captured pieces are removed
• moving between your opponents pieces is ok
• if more than one piece is enclosed at the same time (in same direction or different) all pieces are captures
  
• the center square is "safe" and a piece on this square can not be captured
• pieces on this square can make up a string of enclosed pieces, in which case the other pieces are captured
• game setup:
• players take turns placing 2 pieces on the board on open squares of their choosing.
• the last player to put pieces down goes first
• game play:
• players take turns moving a single piece to an adjacent square
• after which captures pieces are removed
  
• a player wins when the other player is left with only one piece