Bloggy

So I just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C.

The trip was the culmination of about 8 weeks of study for the series of exam and interviews required to graduate the Navy Prospective Nuclear Engineer Officer (PNEO) curriculum. You basically take all the stuff that you already know about the plant from having operated on it, and then go and really dig into how everything really works. It’s not good enough to know that a procedure tells you to do something in the event of a casualty. You have to know why the procedure is written that way (i.e. what do these steps prevent, what could go wrong if you don’t do the procedure right?). It’s not always about operations either, almost more important is learning about the various maintenance responsibilities that way when you’re the guy actually responsible for supervising the entire department’s maintenance schedule you’ll understand what’s coming across your desk.

After passing a comprehensive written exam a student is sent to Washington D.C. to interview with the smart guys at Naval Reactors to judge your worthiness to be the Engineer Officer. If you also pass that screening then you’re done, if not you get to try again (up to a finite number of times).

It sounds demanding (and it is) but most people put in the time and effort required to make it so most people generally pass, even if it takes a second attempt. But it’s nice to have it knocked out of the way early, especially since in my case my command had to get a waiver approved for me to go earlier than normal. Had I not qualified we would only have 1 Engineer-qualified division officer on the boat which we try to avoid. :)

Posted by mpyne under Navy & Personal | 1 Comment »

kdesvn-build 1.6.1 had some issues in the sample configuration regarding the build order of phonon and kdesupport so I’ve taken that fix and a few others and have released kdesvn-build 1.6.2. It’s also the first kdesvn-build that I’ve digitally signed. I’ve had a GPG key for awhile now but I’ve not put the effort into signing the code because it didn’t seem necessary. Someday I’ll actually get to go to Akademy and thereby get my key signed but until then at least there’s a bit more trust you can associate with the code.

As far as future directions for kdesvn-build, what I’m working on now is code to allow kdesvn-build to have a persistent data store. This will be initially to support wish 157992, to avoid the bother of running make/make install if no source update occurred. I envision keeping track of the last time a module was successfully built and installed for each module and using that to implement the feature.

But is there any other bit of data that would be useful to retain about modules and what gets built? Note that I’m referring to things that are not easily looked up after the fact. The revision on disk, for instance, is easily queried.

One other kdesvn-build nit is that the program currently will automatically approve the KDE SVN SSL signature for those using https:// since otherwise the program may freeze forever waiting for a user confirmation which the user can’t see (normally output is logged and not sent to tty). I don’t really like the idea of doing that but the alternatives are to have the user cache the authorization for the KDE SSL server instead of kdesvn-build or to configure Subversion not to prompt for KDE’s SSL certificate (either by local configuration or by KDE somehow obtaining a cert that OpenSSL can trust by default). Either way is work I’d rather avoid putting the user through. Thoughts/suggestions are appreciated.

One last thing, kdesvn-build will require at least Perl 5.8 in the future (and may already as I have no 5.6 to test against). In addition if anyone wants to look at the documentation and give me recommendations for improvement (or better yet, patches ;) I’d appreciate it.

Posted by mpyne under KDE & Programming & kdesvn-build | No Comments »

I was reading news on some video gaming sites today, and these sites typically have places for their readers to leave comments.

So I was going through the comments and one thing that strikes me is how offended some people are at the success of Nintendo, as if it was an affront to all that is holy for people to buy more copies of Wii Fit than Metal Gear Solid 4.

I am completely confused by this line of reasoning, and probably more confused as to why some people are so bitter. I could almost understand it 6 years ago when it was 3 video game systems competing for basically the same audience. Nintendo wisely decided that they weren’t going to out-muscle Sony and Microsoft and re-tooled their product line to where they thought the money was… and succeeded, probably far above their highest expectations. But that hasn’t killed Sony or Microsoft, they are still tending to that market. The Wii itself isn’t useless for a hardcore gamer but there’s a large list of titles for Wii that many “gamers” would never play.

The reason for the success of Nintendo is obvious (to me) in retrospect: They appeal directly to those with the money. Parents and older adults have more money than teenagers and young adults. So when Nintendo found a way to deliver a product that was enjoyable but the older age group they were practically guaranteed success, the only question is whether they completely get rid of their younger audience or not. I think as long as you drop pre-conceptions and allow yourself to play a game because it is fun and not just because it’s flashy that you’ll find stuff to like on the Wii no matter what your age.

In my case, ever since I was old enough to buy my own hardware and software I had at least whatever Nintendo was offering (I later picked up a PS2 as well). When I didn’t have money to buy games I noticed that Nintendo’s software (for the NES, SNES, and N64) was almost uniformly fun. Even though the characters for the major franchises (Mario, Zelda, Metroid) would be re-used from game to game, the game itself was generally much different, which avoided the feeling of playing a rehash.

So when Wii came out I picked it up, along with Zelda: Twilight Princess. And then… not much. But that was OK, I still had quite the GameCube backlog to finish. But then I noticed something weird. Although I had always encouraged my wife to play video games, there weren’t many she liked (although she could probably utterly destroy 2/3^rds of you in Super Mario Bros.). But when I returned home on the patrol after we bought the Wii she had a couple of games for it… and didn’t want me to take the Wii underway when I left again. :)

Now she plays the Wii more than I do. And perhaps more to the point, I don’t have the time now to play games like I could before even if I wanted. The GameCube backlog is still valid, and now I can throw on all the Wii games I have. In fact, the last period of time I had for playing video games was probably when I was in high school with my parents buying video games for Christmas. But now those same parents are able to buy games for themselves that they actually enjoy with the Wii, and they are not ungodly expensive either.

So even though I only have a few “gamer’s game” titles on Wii it’s already more than enough. I’ve got Guitar Hero III, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Rock Band (sort of; more on that later), Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Twilight Princess, and Mario Kart Wii. I don’t even have time to play through all of these like I want to. So even though there’s probably some XBox 360 or PS3 games I’d enjoy there’s no reason for me to spend money on these systems, as I don’t have time to play the games I own.

But instead of people criticizing Wii by saying that people pick it up just to play Wii Sports for two hours and forget about it, which the sales numbers prove wrong (not to mention Nintendo Channel results), I wish people would congratulate Nintendo for opening up a new gaming market. These kids are insulted that they’re grandparents are able to play Wii Bowling, I’m happy that more people find it fun to play at all.

Posted by mpyne under KDE | No Comments »