youfailed.us – Page 16 – Today is the yesterday that we will regret tomorrow.

Google I Freakin O

I went to Google I/O and it was easily the best conference I’ve been to. Prepare for some rambling.

I’ve only really been to E3 before this. That was in the days of the old-skool E3 that doesn’t exist anymore where it was all about being an insider, who you know not what you know . . . a cast system for sure. If you’ve been to E3 you can relate.

Sure, there are things I could complain about with Google I/O . . . they ran out of Diet Pepsi!!! . . . they changed the location and times of some of the presentations . . . the names of the presenters wasn’t as prominent as I would have liked (presenter names were not on the “big board” or on the listings outside the presentation rooms) . . . there were no booth babes to balance out the sausage 🙂 . . . the presentation rooms were really cramped and the solution was for the people at the end of the rows to move inward to fill in seats when I got there early to get that isle seat! . . . everyone had a laptop but me and it didn’t seem like they were paying attention . . . if you had a laptop you had to have a few batteries and risk testicular cancer because there was no good place for all those laptop people.

But those are all so minor especially since I didn’t bring my laptop. It would be embarrassing anyway . . . I saw several MacBook Airen (plural form?). Here are the good points of things that really matter:

* (free) Food everywhere . . . every time I came out of a session I discovered new food . . . and bins full of junk from gummy worms (that I loath) to yogurt raisins (that I love).

* The sessions I went to were all well done and the presenters were nice and not arrogant, happy to answer questions, happy to be giving the presentation, etc

* In the sessions they did “start from the beginning” but then did get fairly technical for a session that’s meant to only be a talk

* It was well organized and even though they changes a few things around they announced it at the beginning of all the sessions to let everyone know . . . the “big board” that had the times and tracks on it was nice and the posting of the goings on at the door to the sessions was nice too.

* The after hours party was great and FREE BEER . . . FREE FOOD . . . FREE BEER (on tap and in bottles) . . . More free food . . even more. Several Wii’s with with Wii Sports . . . foosball . . . air hockey . . . and Flight of the Concords was really good.

* I only went to one Fireside Chat (where the developers sit at the front of the room and take questions) and it was for Android and it was packed! But the questions were good and the devs were happy and excited to answer and afterwards I talked to one of the developers and he said the iPhone was junk! (no he didn’t, sorry . . . he just said he couldn’t say because he was obviously biased).

* I missed the first keynote and apparently it was awesome but I really enjoyed the second one even if the first one made it seem weak

I read one post about Google I/O and he said something about Google pushing it’s own stuff and how it’s not something you should be surprised about at a Google conference, etc. I just didn’t see Google pushing anything other than “go and develop more stuff and get excited about it!”. I remember the lines like “use your favorite search engine to find x” even though Google could have mandated people say “use google search to do x”. I honestly don’t think Google was trying to do anything other than say “we love developers”. Here is another example. Google has it’s own “Google Presentations” but I saw presentations done with Powerpoint and even Apple’s Keynote. Google lets people use the tools that get the job done, period.

Okay, now it’s story time.

At the Google party the first 40 minutes or so were torture . . . I was there alone and didn’t have anyone to talk to and I had walked around looking at the food so many times I could have mapped it out. I should went to the “Birds of a Feather” thing . . . maybe that was to meet people! But I got there late (when back to hotel to change after the sessions) and after my wondering I decided to plant myself by the air hockey table to see if someone would feel sorry for me and let me play. That turned out to work well and I met several people and I wish I could remember their names! Before the first few games I asked if “puck stopping” was allowed . . . so far I hadn’t seen it much but most of the people I saw play were casual (maybe first time?) players. The first round I won one and lost the next one. I talked to the guy I lost to for a while . . . he was in the printing business and wrote software with the GWT which he told me about. After that the concert started and everyone stopped to watch that. After the concert (which was funny as hell and makes me wish I would have watched the HBO show more) I went back to my old standby and when it was my turn I won 6 in a row. People kept saying how the puck stopping “changed the game” and how it was cheating but not saying that it was cheating and I would say I was Google and I’m starting the hockey 2.0 revolution . . Google is to maps and Sheldon is to pucking stopping! I don’t think I was getting my message across. After my games though I saw a lot more puck stopping. I ended up loosing to a woman (one of about 10 in a room of 3000 guys) but was kinda glad it was over (I didn’t let her win or anything . . . I was just tired and maybe had one too many beers . . . and she was pretty good with her bank shot . . . I wanted a rematch but after that I met some people and we ended up playing Wii Tennis for a while). I went back one last time . . . last game before they kicked us out and won! I was 8 and 2 for the day.

Okay, that’s it for now.

Sheldon

My mouse hates me

Occasionally my mouse would lock up and the pointer speed would slow down and it would be hard to navigate so I would go to the control panel and change the pointer speed to accommodate. But then a few minutes later it would speed back up and be too fast so back to the control panel. I tried to close down Firefox (figuring that it was eating away too much memory or I had some webpage up that was hitting the CANVAS too hard) but even with Firefox closed my mouse was messing with me.

I looked for all kinds of things that I thought might be doing it. I stopped every process but the bare essentials. I searched and searched and searched. I decided I needed to reinstall but I still have work to do so I just kinda dealt with it for a few weeks (I settled on an “in-between” speed so that if it was slow or fast I could adjust my movements to accommodate . . . it was brain training!). Oh, and the same thing happened with a similar but different mouse.

Then one day I plug my new BlackBerry in (I wanted an iPhone but the Blackberry was $50 . . . and even free now! . . and I lost my other phone so I had to do something) to USB and I got a notice on the phone saying there wasn’t enough juice to charge the BlackBerry. That’s strange because I plugged into a powered USB hub. Anyway, I figured the BlackBerry had some special power requirements or wouldn’t charge with just mini USB.

So I decided that I should buy a new USB hub thinking maybe that was the problem. I have no idea why I came to that conclusion but my old hub was one of the first USB 2.0 hubs to come out. I get a new Belkin. I go to plug it in and notice that something else had come unplugged . . . that’s right, my USB Hub!!! I plugged it in and ever since the mouse has been working fine. WHY WOULD YOU NEED A POWERED USB HUB FOR A MOUSE?! That and the keyboard was all that was ever plugged in there.

Sheldon

Whilst? Really?

I am by no means an English snob, but I am seriously starting to become increasingly enraged by the blogosphere’s use of the word "whilst". In my 34 years on this earth I have never known a man or woman using the word "whilst" that wasn’t a complete dickhead. Now it seems like a cultural phenomenon.

Okay, English people get a pass. Maybe. But if you’re a beer swilling MCM (‘merican cash money) type, stop using "whilst" immediately. I know that you want to seem smarter than you really are. But you aren’t. SO STOP.

What’s wrong with game ratings?

So, I’ve decided that I pretty much hate video game reviews. I can’t exactly say what should be the ideal format, but I sure know what I don’t like. Here’s a sampling.

No Sense of Scale

Most game reviews have scales that are so broad that they practically invite arbitrary scoring. Take gamespot for example. In the past, they had a one hundred point scale, 0.0 through 10.0. Of course, this is ridiculous. Let’s say that you have a game that rates 7.7, and another game that rates 7.8. I challenge any reviewer to point to some finite, verifiable aspect of a game that separates the 7.7’s from the 7.8’s. When you consider also that there are several reviewers at gamespot, with each reviewer bringing their own likes and dislikes to the table, it becomes impossible to believe that a game which rates a 7.7 from Reviewer A is markedly inferrior to a game which rates a 7.8 from Reviewer B.

Recently Gamespot updated their rating system such that they still have0-10 rating system, but all scores divisible by 0.5. A step in the right direction, but that still leaves with twenty possible rankings for a game. In my opinion it would still difficult for a reviewer to point to a particular feature that made them arrive at 8.0 as opposed to an 8.5.

Just like my Hyundai Tiburon, Game Ratings Experience Rapid Deflation.

Generally speaking, as gaming platforms mature the games for that form get better. That’s to be expected, since game houses have more time to work with a game and learn the intricacies of the platform. However, game reviews don’t reflect this increase in quality. Any xbox owner will tell you that Blood Wake is, well, shit. However, IGN gave it an 8.4 (again with the 100 point scales, ugh). How can this be? Is IGN corrupt? Well, maybe, but the problem here is that Blood Wake was a launch title, and when you compare blood wake to one of six other launch titles, your opinion of "good" can get a little skewed. Advance the clock by three years, and things might change. For example, Indigo Prophecy is another 8.4 game according to IGN. By IGN’s own rating system these games are equal in terms of quality. Wait. What? No, no, no!

Some Game Reviews Have More Documentation Than the Games Themselves.

Check out the 1-Up review for Halo 3. It’s 1,364 words. For comparison, Roger Ebert’s review of Doctor Zhivago is 841 words. Now, I’ve never been a big fan of the Halo 3’s plot, but I can safely say that it’s maybe, just maybe, a bit less complex than David Lean’s 1965 epic about of a trials and tribulations of a Doctor/Poet living through the Bolshevik Revolution.

Seriously, how long does it take to tell me whether you like a damn video game?

In conclusion

Alright. So video game reviews need to be better. Better how? Well, I don’t know that yet. Still working on it. But when I do pin it down, I’m sure you’ll give it at least a 98%!

Dreaming about Dreaming in Code

Okay, so I’m reading Dreaming in Code and I feel like I should hate it because some guy at Sun said something about it being whack. I don’t remember the details. But Scott Rosenberg (the author) responded to the Sun guy (who I remember as being pretty smart because of how cool DTrace is) and the Sun guy responded and it was really good reading. Okay, not that good . . . I don’t remember most of it as you can tell. Anyway, the point is that it got me to start thinking about how I need to read this book. I already had the book . . . ordered it when Joel mentioned it in his blog (even though it’s not on his reading list). And, yeah, I called him Joel . . . he may not know me (though I did meet him but I guess I didn’t make much of an impression . . . I flew to SFC to see a demo of Fogbugz . . . that can be another post!) but I know him just from reading all his stuff. Beside, to me, “Joel” is like the “Linus” of software developer blogs so it’s cool to just say “Joel” in the context of software development even if you don’t know the man.

I found myself really liking the book. As a developer, I figured I must be, well, missing something because right in the beginning of the book Scott says he wrote the book for non-developers . . “normal people”. As I read it I kept thinking to myself: “most normal people probably wouldn’t understand”. Anyway, I kept reading.

I have a bad habit of only reading books when I fly . . . I don’t set enough time aside for “real reading”. Sure, I read RSS feeds and Time and Linux Journal and even Fine Woodworking. But that’s more casual than something like a book. So once I started the book I had the urge to fly . . . or at least I didn’t mind the prospect of a two hour flight. So I decided that I should go to the Google GEO Developer Series that some fine people at the Googleplex decided to put together for the locals. Two hours of reading to and from San Jose . . sweet! The GEO stuff was pretty cool too by the way . . I’ll write about that later.

Okay, back to the book. Later on in the book there is a section about one smart guy who thought programming should be as easy as English and everyone should be able to do it. While reading that I thought to myself: writing isn’t all that easy and most people can “read and write” but what they might write wouldn’t be all that interesting and I certainly wouldn’t call it good. This post is a perfect example . . . I mean, even that colon is out of place! And what’s with the . . . . all the time? Anyway, not 4 pages later is the example the of the writer who tries his hand at programming and ends up with the opinion that programming is harder than writing. Then it goes on to say about how English majors have to study great writing but programmers don’t study great code. All very insightful!!! I’m saying it all wrong but I’m trying to be brief.

Anyway, I’m not quite done with the book and I hope to go to the next Geo conference on Wednesday so I can finish it up. After that I’ll write something a little more comprehensive. I just wanted to have something up on this website! And since I’m almost done I need to grab up a book from Joel’s reading list that I haven’t read.

Sheldon