Coders Edge

I've still been very busy

at Urge Central you will find an image collage.

Dec 3, 2013

Bootstrap js

This very easy to use framework makes layout a breeze! here is a link to a sample page utilzing the bootstrap framework. Well, it isn't much, and the links don't do anything. It is just to show how easy bootstrap is to use.

Here is another bootstrap page, with some animated graphics.

Supertuxkart 0.8.1!

Supertuxkart 0.8.1! It's not much different from the 0.8. Some of the items are different, like the turbo powerups are blue now. That's cool. It was very easy to build it just by following their directions. I was playing the game almost as soon as it was done compiling. One hitch: when you run it with out installing it you need to be in the correct directory in order for it to work. Basically at the root of the build.

I haven't learned how to build a track for the game, but I do sometimes change the graphics. I have all of the new graphics here, so I used some of it for one of the levels. It's not hard to do it. I copied it and renamed it, and put references to it where it needed to be so now I have two 'museum' levels, one with my special graphics.

I did discover some cool stuff to do with Supertuxkart 0.8.1 (which has just been released, by the way). There is an 'artist's mode' that I did not know existed. Also, by using this mode, I can have the kart consume as many power ups as I would like. I't is sort of an ultimate cheat level. the game is rich in the way that it works. Some of the levels are far more detailed than others. All of them are far too short.

I love the idea of taking elevation data and crafting tracks like that. It seems as though that shouldn't be too hard to generate. I actually thought of that idea over 15 years ago by telling my friends that I knew that, someday, we would play with tracks that were just the same as what is in the real world. I am sure I am not the first one to think of this idea.

Some of the levels being more detailed, I decided to go and explore in places where the game, when you don't play in 'artist's mode, won't let you go otherwise. I also shut off an 'invisible wall' on one track by just removing the file in question that was the invisible wall (I don't like invisible walls). The wall was no longer there. And then, well, then it was obvious to me why the wall had been there in the first place. The reason: because without it if one gets too close to the edge one falls right off and over it. The old version: you smack into the invisible wall. You don't careen over.

I played the new soccer level (by myself) which was cute. I went to artist level on the city at night level. There is a cool thing with all of the buildings being really really tall. You can fly off to the tops of them and land on them. It makes me think we would make a race track that only goes along the tops of buildings. There would be no railings. Falling is always a posibility.

I modded the skyline level, calling that Railtrail Skyline. It would be cool to have a level that would be a skyline/city at night level where one would race along the streets, but then also race all the way along the sky, and then get back by hopping down the buildings one at a time. Is there any way to 'merge levels' so to speak? If you put the skyline level way up high above the city at night level you could just copy all the files together, I am guess, if the invisible wall was so easy to remove. It must be just as easy to add new things just by adding them. Of course, if the models intersect, it might be a little bit confusing to play the game, if not impossible.

And as far as artist mode goes, why switch back? The new Supertux level is significantly harder (thank the upgrade for that, I suppose) that I can not, and have not, won a single race in the Supertux mode. If you crash and die even once it leaves you way far behind. Commonly the other karts are dogging behind you at the end of 8 or so laps even in on a large track, which doesn't often happen in the 'expert' level.

I guess they changed the axis orientation of the tracks so that the coordinates of the old versions of tracks are 90 degrees askew of the old game (it might be some other value, say 180). And so on some of hte levels the karts are in places where the game checks for it, and it finds that the kart is in a bad place, and it doesn't start the game. It actually kicks you out of the game all the way! Kind of annoying. Anywho, the 'artist' level takes away that annoyance, and you can still play the game without a hitch (and fly around, and barrage the opponents with an endless and carpel tunnel inducing endless stream. It's really kind of cool They all bounce and arch off and do their thing, and it makes kind of a pretty sound. Or how about endless powerups? Don't do it! You'll hurt your thumb. I suppose map it to a keyboard key and just leave a piece of lead on it and the barrage will just keep going.

So in Artist mode I play the level with the problem with the karts being in bad starting locations. Some of them end up underneath the track. So throughout the game play they constantly die and are regenerated over and over. They progress backwards as their kart is placed further back everytime they die. Little flying hawk rises from the road and then the kart dies again. If it ever found a place that was not below the track it might have a chance and not die again

Also interesting is that when the kart starts too high it falls from the sky at the start.

There is a lot more that can be done with this software than just a racing game. The formats for the save models do not seem to have a readily available way to translate them into something that blender can use. There is a blitz3D company that will sell you an 80 dollar tool. That isn't really a lot of money to be able to have a starting point with which to create a new track. But, I suppose, open source and all that, the stuff is probably not provided by the developers of the game because they would really like the formats that they use to be unencumbered. They can provide the xport tool and not the import one. That will spawn people to use the software available. People to whom 70 dollars is a lot of money.

task chairs

I am still loving the chair. I have been much more productive since I got it. I am not sure if it is due to the chair or just bad weather.

Fedora 20

Soon and the upgrade craziness begins again. There was one upgrade cycle that sucked a real real lot and almost made me decide to use something else. They seem to have gotten it better. And in all honesty: running the old version of Grub seems a little bit brain dead. The reason I had so much trouble? I didn't read that there was that one more step in the installation of grub2 that I needed to do by hand. After I figured that out I was good to go. In anycase the new Fedora is soon and I will be upgrading.

I'm looking for work. The only people who call are jerky guys who can't speak in a dialect that I understand. They are calling from Montevideo for a job in Taipai. The guy, himself, sounds like he originated from some place even farther away than that.

And then, you know the tell is that they do this word soup thing with items from your resume. So if you did automation sequencing and photo-voltaic experiments, in unrelated jobs, they will tell you they are looking for photo-volaic robots for sequencing music. huh?

A friend of mine, who goes on about stuff like he knows, says that 'everyone knows' that those kinds of headhunters don't really have any jobs for us. And that he doesn't even bother to talk to that ethnicity of headhunter. I make a point of trying to see if any of them are real, and would actually hire an American who doesn't come from the same place that they do becuase I don't ever hear that they do. They don't seem to ever hire Americans. I'm not supposed to say this but it seems very true. It is as if they have to say that they talked to an out of work American who could fill the job, and actually doesn't want it, before they can just go hire their cousins and friends from back home.

Do they put on the thick accent intentionally? The say to their bosses in a the deadpan New Jersey accent "I can't find an American Engineer to take these positions. We will have to, oh shoot, hire my cut rate friends from my parent's country." Next scene, with the thickest and most rediculous parody of their 'back home' accent they are talking to an American engineer. As liltting and ununderstandible as possible.

Oh, come on, it can't really be like that, can it?

My latest Resume. some demos.

my antique mirror

 Software Metal
 If it can't be broke
 you won't be either