Divine Lunacy

Since Google Toolbar (beta) for Firefox came out, I’ve been having a problem with text boxes turning yellow at random. This has been quite a problem as not all font colors show up well in that ugly shade of yellow. The grey that is used in my comment form, for instance, cannot be read at all. I went through great lengths to figure out what could be causing those yellow boxes. As my blog is valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS, it clearly couldn’t be that, so what could it be? I was logging into my gmail account today, and something about Auto Fill (a feature of the Google toolbar) popped up. I started poking around a bit, and found an option that caused text boxes to turn yellow when autofill thought it could fill them in. That’s nice. I could have filled them in, but they were yellow, so I couldn’t even see what I was typing.

In case anyone was wondering, the 79^th natural number that is divisible by 3 or 4 but not 6 is 236. Don’t ask me why, but it clearly isn’t an accident that (3)(79) = 237…

Greg on his death bed: “Just one more digit of pi and I’ll set the world record…”. For those of you who know me, I’m sure you understood that…

I was just looking through Awstats. Checkout the search terms that have led to my blog this month:

• given a triangle abc how would you use only a compass and straight edge to find a point p such that triangles abp acp and bcp have equal perimeters? assume that abc is constructed so that a solution does exist. -> 13 referals
• myspace sucks -> 7 referals
• myspace customizations -> 1 referal
• 1136102400000 gmail -> 1 referal
• funny ambitions -> 1 referal
• topnotcher -> 1 referal
• myspace crashes firefox -> 1 referal
• topnotcher in german -> 1 referal

First, I’d like you to note that I’m clearly not the only person who thinks myspace sucks. Secondly, notice that two of those are math related. Thirdy, yes, indeed, myspace does crash firefox, but are my ambitions really that funny?

I just wrote ten MySQL queries, and didn’t bother to proofread them. They ran on the first try. Perfectly, as in without error…

Funniest thing… really. I stepped out of the car at RIC this morning, and headed through the parking lot towards Gaige Hall. When I was but ten feet from the car, I saw a large figure with black hair and a brown shirt frantically running through the parking lot. (can you guess who it was?) I instinctively shouted “Oh my god! That’s Mike Smith!!!”. Being fat myself, I didn’t bother to catch up with him. In retrospect, I wish I had. We then would have taken the SAT in the same room.(instead, I was stuck with a bunch of gangstas whom I had never seen before, and probably won’t see again) Those of you who have yet to take the SAT, beware. That is one obnoxiously long test. I found it pleasant up to section six, but after that, all I could think about was leaving. Goddamned College Board.

Apparently Hannah was at RIC as well, but I didn’t see her. I feel better knowing that I was in the same boat as her though. Neither one of us knew how to get to RIC. She did the smart thing though. She followed her dad there… Me on the other hand… I had my mom bring me. My mom dropped me off near Gaige, but noted that the testing was moved to Alger (somehow everyone knew exactly how to get to Alger. I just followed them…). Given my mother’s instructions for getting to Alger, my Dad waited outside the building for when I would finish testing (he even went in the building to make sure it was the right building, but the orange-shirted Nazi kicked him out.) My mother failed to tell my father that she dropped me off in front of Murray. A problem that arose is that Alger is a four-sided building, and I came out the side opposite from where my Dad was waiting. I went to Murray Hall where I was dropped off and waited for an hour and a half while my Dad waited outside Alger. Things don’t usually work very well when two parties are simultaneously waiting for each other in different locations. I’m quite surprised I didn’t go blind from the sun reflecting off the cars as I sat in waiting.

Many of you probably remember back in August when I said I might try to code a mafia replica. I said might because at the time, I fully realized all the work involved in such a goal. Writing a game from scratch is quite a job. As Linus Torvalds would say:

Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you’ll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don’t think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn’t solve some fairly immediate need, it’s almost certainly over-designed. And don’t expect people to jump in and help you. That’s not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say " hey, that _almost_ works for me”, and they’ll get involved in the project.

My problem is that I did start large, and I did expect it to get large, and I did overdesign, and I did give up. I was also completely alone. It isn’t that the programming was particuarly challenging. In fact, it’s quite easy. The problem is the sheer volme of work that needs to be done to get a remotely playable game out of that code. I did get quite far on the core of the game, but i never got any game play features implememted.

Just as it seemed the whole online RPG thing was going down the hole, a new, and completely different opportunity arose. The admin of hitmen is fed up with the game, and lacks the time and paitence to continue to be the admin. He has recently decided that he is going to give the code away to a deserving individual. Joe applied for this position and has been notified that he is one of the top three choices. If we’re selected, our dream of hosting a game without programming it from scratch will come true. (and we’ll love it and cherish it forever.) Adiran, the admin, is planning on making his decision on Monday.