Charlie Wiederhold
11-22-05, 03:42 AM
Tonight I finished up the major modifications to the discussion software (http://www.gamingisstupid.com/forums/) that I had been aiming for. The biggest changes are the addition of a collapse button for user info, and total rework of how individual posts are presented. The goal of both is to streamline the threads and compress the info as much as possible. I dislike the majority of forums due to the amount of clutter around and between posts, and while avatars and such certainly make it easier to identify "people" quicker and provide identity to the words, you can go overboard.
The user info collapse functionality is from a modification I saw on www.vbulletin.org (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=94092) and have since updated to reflect what I wanted from it. The original author's version is a good example of having the right idea, but not following through to the logical conclusion. He wanted to provide a way to hide the extra information, but in the process wound up making the default view even more cluttered, and the collapsed view still displaying unnecessary information. Keep that sort of situation in mind, as in the future it's something I'll be railing against game developers for very similar mistakes. There are so many good ideas out there that fall flat because they aren't followed through to the proper conclusion and are left only feeling half finished.
I didn't get to play Obscure much due to a friend's 21st birthday this weekend. She was in Iraq for two years, and this was also my first chance to see her in that much time to boot. Regardless, Obscure still has me intrigued. For $20 or less I don't see how you can go wrong unless you just hate survival horror.
I'll be out of town from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, so don't expect to see anything here. San Francisco is my Thanksgiving destination this year, but not to visit family. Matthias Worch who I worked with at Ritual now lives up there and it's a good chance to pop in and run around the city with him and meet his girlfriend. I was there first… so she must meet with my approval! :)
Finally, tonight at Borders I picked up Timelines of World History (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0751337420/104-6560655-8573540?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance). It provides one unique thing in approaching history that I feel most people struggle with without knowing it… which is having a proper perspective on timeframes. It's one thing to know Alexander the Great was romping around in the 300BC era… but most people can't make a proper connection between the time that passed from there until Ceaser converted Rome from a Republic into an Empire. Some can't even tell you if the Greeks were top dogs first or the Romans, but that's understandable given how weak much of history education has become.
This book does an excellent job of presenting the eras in a way that you can appreciate how much (or sometimes how little) time actually passed between certain events, especially the rise and falls of empires. It points out how exceptionally biased ALL of Western education is against the history of the Eastern empires, especially what was going on in China while the Western societies were still trying to get their shit together. I can remember my own world history classes and they were pretty average (despite having an excellent teacher). The majority of the time was spent on what happened in Europe until the US came into the picture, with only passing mentions of anyone else except when wars were fought. I don't expect anything different and I know that the Eastern educations have the same problems in regards to teaching about what was happening in the West as well. It's just human nature, but thankfully technology and information dispersion is where it is today and anyone willing to put forth the effort can learn all they could ever want. Time is the only limiting factor now.
The book isn't deep (nor is it intended to be). What it is though, is organized and presented in a unique way to give the reader a much better appreciation for relative time passage for different events. It gives ancient wars a different feel when you can compare and contrast it to Vietnam or WW2, for example… or even better, the current Gulf War. Considering wars have been fought on that exact same ground for longer than recorded history… it's worth having a proper sense of perspective on what we are doing there and why. History reminds us it's never actually been for the reasons given to the people asked to die in those wars.
I'll stop boring all 3 of you who actually come read this from time to time. Trust me, I'll start getting to more interesting updates soon enough. Still testing the waters around here. :)
The user info collapse functionality is from a modification I saw on www.vbulletin.org (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=94092) and have since updated to reflect what I wanted from it. The original author's version is a good example of having the right idea, but not following through to the logical conclusion. He wanted to provide a way to hide the extra information, but in the process wound up making the default view even more cluttered, and the collapsed view still displaying unnecessary information. Keep that sort of situation in mind, as in the future it's something I'll be railing against game developers for very similar mistakes. There are so many good ideas out there that fall flat because they aren't followed through to the proper conclusion and are left only feeling half finished.
I didn't get to play Obscure much due to a friend's 21st birthday this weekend. She was in Iraq for two years, and this was also my first chance to see her in that much time to boot. Regardless, Obscure still has me intrigued. For $20 or less I don't see how you can go wrong unless you just hate survival horror.
I'll be out of town from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, so don't expect to see anything here. San Francisco is my Thanksgiving destination this year, but not to visit family. Matthias Worch who I worked with at Ritual now lives up there and it's a good chance to pop in and run around the city with him and meet his girlfriend. I was there first… so she must meet with my approval! :)
Finally, tonight at Borders I picked up Timelines of World History (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0751337420/104-6560655-8573540?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance). It provides one unique thing in approaching history that I feel most people struggle with without knowing it… which is having a proper perspective on timeframes. It's one thing to know Alexander the Great was romping around in the 300BC era… but most people can't make a proper connection between the time that passed from there until Ceaser converted Rome from a Republic into an Empire. Some can't even tell you if the Greeks were top dogs first or the Romans, but that's understandable given how weak much of history education has become.
This book does an excellent job of presenting the eras in a way that you can appreciate how much (or sometimes how little) time actually passed between certain events, especially the rise and falls of empires. It points out how exceptionally biased ALL of Western education is against the history of the Eastern empires, especially what was going on in China while the Western societies were still trying to get their shit together. I can remember my own world history classes and they were pretty average (despite having an excellent teacher). The majority of the time was spent on what happened in Europe until the US came into the picture, with only passing mentions of anyone else except when wars were fought. I don't expect anything different and I know that the Eastern educations have the same problems in regards to teaching about what was happening in the West as well. It's just human nature, but thankfully technology and information dispersion is where it is today and anyone willing to put forth the effort can learn all they could ever want. Time is the only limiting factor now.
The book isn't deep (nor is it intended to be). What it is though, is organized and presented in a unique way to give the reader a much better appreciation for relative time passage for different events. It gives ancient wars a different feel when you can compare and contrast it to Vietnam or WW2, for example… or even better, the current Gulf War. Considering wars have been fought on that exact same ground for longer than recorded history… it's worth having a proper sense of perspective on what we are doing there and why. History reminds us it's never actually been for the reasons given to the people asked to die in those wars.
I'll stop boring all 3 of you who actually come read this from time to time. Trust me, I'll start getting to more interesting updates soon enough. Still testing the waters around here. :)