I am experimenting with my 2 new blogs. One will be "advertised" and the other will be invisible. The antispyware blog is the one I find most interesting. As I find topics and post them, I leave comments on the target site that link back to my blog (if commenting is available). The other one will just get the content. After a few days of minimal work, I have gotten 12 visitors to the antispyware blog and 0 to the other one.
As I am looking for good antispyware content, I find other content relating to spam, antivirus, and security. I am tempted to post links to them to help raise their search rankings. But I am making my blogs to narrow.
Here is one such blog that deserves more attention Ann Elisabeth (spam huntress), she has some excellent blog Spam related posts.
http://www.annelisabeth.com/pc/pc17.htm
http://www.annelisabeth.com/blog/archives/000314.html#more
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Monday, February 14, 2005
Hot Topics
I just launched two new blogs. One is a subject that I run into all the time. antipyware. The other is just interesting at the moment. North Korea's Nukes.
I am constantly dealing with spyware. Either from users at work or from friends and family. It has gotten out of control and my quick tricks no longer work.
I am constantly dealing with spyware. Either from users at work or from friends and family. It has gotten out of control and my quick tricks no longer work.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Every problem is a nail
When your only tool is a hammer, why do all your problems look like nails. In response to my last post, I think XML is my hammer. I do feel that it was a creative solution that in the end has not saved me much work. But the problem set I was working with was more fun. It had a freshness to it that database updates no longer have.
At one time, I wanted to use XML for just about everything. I realize when its useful or over kill. Programming projects like my survey generator/processor could be heavy in code, but it is a tiny project mostly XML and XSL.
At one time, I wanted to use XML for just about everything. I realize when its useful or over kill. Programming projects like my survey generator/processor could be heavy in code, but it is a tiny project mostly XML and XSL.
Creative Solutions
A little while ago I got a request to build a simple survey. It was one page with about 10 questions. Before I started, I realized it was just as easy to write a generic survey processor then to fully code the survey. Each new survey gives me time to work on the generic processor instead of manually building surveys. Different requirements gives me a new set of features.
My generic processor takes input from any web form and wraps it up with XML. All I do is add the form elements and let the processor do the rest. This method works really well for most studies.
I am currently working on building 5 questionnaires. Two of then have over 100 questions and all the questions are free form fields. The reporting requirements are completely different from just handing over an excel spreadsheet. Yet again I found myself writing a generic report processor and with that ground work out of the way, I can also generate the survey.
If I put all the survey questions in a XML file, I can generate the surveys and generate results inline with the original questions. This sounds overly complicated, but it is very simple to implement with XML, XSL, CSS, and a little server side script.
My generic processor takes input from any web form and wraps it up with XML. All I do is add the form elements and let the processor do the rest. This method works really well for most studies.
I am currently working on building 5 questionnaires. Two of then have over 100 questions and all the questions are free form fields. The reporting requirements are completely different from just handing over an excel spreadsheet. Yet again I found myself writing a generic report processor and with that ground work out of the way, I can also generate the survey.
If I put all the survey questions in a XML file, I can generate the surveys and generate results inline with the original questions. This sounds overly complicated, but it is very simple to implement with XML, XSL, CSS, and a little server side script.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Orbyk - Point of contact
The development of Orbyk is underway. The visuals are fairly raw but I have gotten collision detection to work. Calculating point of contact for the rebound was another story.
It took several attempts to get it right and I am still tweaking it. I spent too much time figuring out complicated math that when it did work, it still didn't help me (but I still needed to do it to know that it would not work). I had one solution that worked well at very slow speeds. It turns out that the closer to the objects edge the detected collision was, the more accurate the calculation was. Once I realized that, after detecting a collision, I would slowly back the object up until it almost didn't register the collision and then did the calculation.
Some collisions that are exactly on the edge or corner could be calculated wrong. I have been too lazy to correct it at the moment ( When I make the main shape a sphere instead of a cube, it will have to change), So I added rebound validation. If I detect a rebound off of a side, I verify that another block is not resting up against that side. If a block does exist to that side, then the calculation was an edge case and was wrong.
I had it working beautifully until I added user input and decided that I was representing speed and direction in a poor way. In the process of correcting movement, I had to revisit my collision and rebound logic.
It took several attempts to get it right and I am still tweaking it. I spent too much time figuring out complicated math that when it did work, it still didn't help me (but I still needed to do it to know that it would not work). I had one solution that worked well at very slow speeds. It turns out that the closer to the objects edge the detected collision was, the more accurate the calculation was. Once I realized that, after detecting a collision, I would slowly back the object up until it almost didn't register the collision and then did the calculation.
Some collisions that are exactly on the edge or corner could be calculated wrong. I have been too lazy to correct it at the moment ( When I make the main shape a sphere instead of a cube, it will have to change), So I added rebound validation. If I detect a rebound off of a side, I verify that another block is not resting up against that side. If a block does exist to that side, then the calculation was an edge case and was wrong.
I had it working beautifully until I added user input and decided that I was representing speed and direction in a poor way. In the process of correcting movement, I had to revisit my collision and rebound logic.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Orbyk
Orbyk was a PocketPC game that I wrote in college. It is like the game breakout, except upside down and in 3D. The view of the game is directly over the top of the game area so you see the ball bounce up towards you and then fall back down to the floor. The bricks are layed flat on the floor and are not stacked. The paddle was removed. To move the ball, you would use the stylus to give the ball spin in the direction that you wanted the ball to go. When it would move in the new direction when it hit the floor. So you had to think one bounce in advance.
The 3D part was simulated. The walls and bricks were designed to look like they have depth. The ball was rendered on the fly. It was like a 4 colored beach ball. The colors made the spin easy to see. We also shaded it to give it more depth.
The rendering was all done manually. We worked directly with the raw display memory. All of our images, tiles, and fonts were hand crafted in NxN arrays, one RRGGBB hex pixel at a time.
Redrawing the whole screen would tear. You could see the rip on the display if we cycled all the colors. To account for this, the only time we would redraw the whole display was at state changes ( menus, pause, or lost and gained focus). The ball was in constant motion. We rendered the ball directly over the existing seen and rubbed out only what was left of the ball from the seen before. We tried clearing the ball before drawing it again, but we could see it rip each frame. The ball rendering was optimized as much as possible.
It was a very addictive game and it quickly ran the battery out on my PocetPC every chance it got.
The 3D part was simulated. The walls and bricks were designed to look like they have depth. The ball was rendered on the fly. It was like a 4 colored beach ball. The colors made the spin easy to see. We also shaded it to give it more depth.
The rendering was all done manually. We worked directly with the raw display memory. All of our images, tiles, and fonts were hand crafted in NxN arrays, one RRGGBB hex pixel at a time.
Redrawing the whole screen would tear. You could see the rip on the display if we cycled all the colors. To account for this, the only time we would redraw the whole display was at state changes ( menus, pause, or lost and gained focus). The ball was in constant motion. We rendered the ball directly over the existing seen and rubbed out only what was left of the ball from the seen before. We tried clearing the ball before drawing it again, but we could see it rip each frame. The ball rendering was optimized as much as possible.
It was a very addictive game and it quickly ran the battery out on my PocetPC every chance it got.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Invisible Walls
I hate running into invisible walls. In my apartment we have a hallway that runs from the livingroom to the bedroom. I have lived here for several months and use that hall regularly. Then for no apparent reason, I can not walk down that hall any more. I can see then floor and the door to the bedroom. And google is no help. Searching for "cannot walk down hallway" returns 273,000 results that don't help me.
finally after spending the day trying to get down that hall, I discovered it was a invisible wall. I know it was not there before because I walked down it yesterday. Now that I know it is a wall I can remove it. Problem solved.
When I find these invisible walls I almost scream. My blood boils.
finally after spending the day trying to get down that hall, I discovered it was a invisible wall. I know it was not there before because I walked down it yesterday. Now that I know it is a wall I can remove it. Problem solved.
When I find these invisible walls I almost scream. My blood boils.
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