Peter Wooley’s Blog

Not all of the blocks fell into place to complete my Bridge of Pursuit (is that what I called it?), but I got closer. I feel pretty good about everything. My independent studies got some much-needed attention, I may just pass my Artificial Intelligence class, and the house is quite clean.

You may notice I didn’t spend any time finishing up my Term Paper. I should do that tomorrow, but tomorrow I’ll be working on my Portfolio. Darn.

I arose this morning shortly after 10:00am. At which time, I made a decision: take a break from work and clean the apartment. I wasn’t really happy with this decision, but the apartment has needed a good cleaning for quite some time, and my being here alone had only intensified the problem.

In order to get me excited about cleaning, I setup a party on ChoreWars, a site that lets you create characters, Dungeons and Dragons-style, and create Adventures (Quests for you WoWers) that involve normal household chores. I hadn’t used the site until today (shows how much I clean), but I figured this was a great way to keep my spirit up. I setup three adventures, Excommunicate the Refuse, Pick up for Vacuuming, and Vacuum. All of them came off without a hitch, but they took me a good few hours and got my character to level 2 with some gold. I did a few other things, like empty the dishwasher, reload the dishwasher, start the laundry, fold the laundry and straighten up my desk, but I forgot to make adventures for them all. So, may ChoreWars isn’t necessary, but it sure makes cleaning more fun.

Shortly after, Kara made it home from the beach. This was followed by the two of us heading out to lunch at Quiznos and her leaving again to get some work done on her 1st Grade Classroom at Yacolt Primary.

Now, I’m back to work. Next up: Rhungard.

I’m not one for Sudoku puzzles. It’s not because I don’t like puzzles, but no one ever explained how logical they are. I know all puzzles can be solved with logic, but they just seemed so ridiculously hard that I didn’t want to spend the time to figure out how to do it. This is the same reason I don’t try Rubix Cubes.

This last Wednesday, for my Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class, the class was given the task to write a console application in C++ to solve the Easy Sudoku puzzles. I spent a large part of the day doing this. I had figured I’d fail and try to finish it up on the day it was due, but I just kept at it, and was able to write it all in just 126 lines of code.

The application reads a comma-delineated text file broken into nine values on nine lines (like a 9×9 Sudoku grid) and loops over each value until it figures out what the proper value is. I played one on Easy this morning and figured out the three rules the Easy puzzles use. Following the normal rules of having the values 1-9 appear only once in a horizontal line, vertical line, and 3×3 box, I just wrote out loops to look up, down, and through those other boxes for each space and widdle away at the possible answers. I surprised myself, as my logic was generally correct as I wrote it.

I also spent a little time making the output look pretty (in Console terms), check it out:

I looked over it, and it seemed to be right, but if you happen to notice something wrong, let me know!

It’s the end of my first work day this weekend, and I feel pretty good. I got a lot done with Drawp, and a bit on other projects. Tomorrow, I plan on fleshing out my new Portfolio, finishing my Term paper rough draft, and spending a bit of time coding C++ in Xcode. We’ll see how that goes… off to sleep I go!

If you’re curious about the bridge drawing at the top of my first post this evening, the answer is yes: I drew something. I felt inspired, and the bridge kept showing up in my head. So, I finally got my Wacom Graphire (Version 1) out and got the proper drivers installed for Pen Pressure in Photoshop. From there, I took a cue from A List Apart and tried my hand with some greyscale.

I was pleased with the result, and more pleased with my process. I drew it in Photoshop (for good or ill) at 11×14 @ 300dpi on cleanly separated layers and even made large revisions when I felt them necessary. Here’s a detail of the broken bridge support:

<obvious> I bet if I keep drawing, I’ll get better. </obvious>

So, I’ve posted my first round of work consisting of a new Drawp Interface revision. No, this was not the thing I all ready had finished (I’ll post that later). I spent a few solid hours making the changes, and am quite pleased with myself. Oh, and sorry to all those with my all of my feeds in your feed reader—you’re just getting twice-as-much me!

Now, I need to go get some dinner. I’ve got two Burger Kings that are very close to me, and I wasn’t sure which one was actually closer, so I utilized Google Maps to make sure. I love the ability to plot new destinations, and do it all from point-and-click. Thankfully, I found out one of the King’s is .9 miles closer than the other, which is 2.0 miles (total) away.

Oh, and now I have a use for Google’s new embeddable maps! Go Google Maps!

It uses an iframe, which is kind of a downer, but I can’t think of something so universal, so I guess I’ll break my mark-up to try it.

Update: The Google Map also tweaks out Wordpress’s Visual Editor (as it tries to load itself) and I forgot to mention that I love where the Yellow Pause symbol is.

Scant minutes ago, Kara drove off to the beach, where she’ll be spending the weekend with her immediate and slightly-extended family. I, however, stayed behind to attempt to fill in some of the giant holes in my Bridge of Pursuit. What am I pursuing, you may ask? Why, Graduation, of course. In order to fill in those holes, so I can saunter across the bridge to Freedom, I need to finish all my projects. As I have this weekend free, I’ll be working on as many projects as I can, as fast as I can.

The hardest part with having free time is spending it wisely. There’s plenty of content out there on the Internet, late night News shows on Comedy Central, and sleep to be had, but I need to stay on track. That’s where you come in, dear reader. I’m a large fan of collaboration, but since there is no one here to converse about my projects or bounce ideas off of, I’m going to talk to you. As I make progress, I’ll report what I’ve accomplished and try to give an idea of what I’ll be working on next (but, it may change).

First off, I’m going to dive into Drawp. While I’m further behind on other projects, Drawp has a tendency to make progress faster, and get me back into the mindset of productive. Plus, I all ready have several things I can post about on the Drawp blog, so it’ll look like I got off to a great start!

I hope you have a pleasant weekend, and I hope I have a productive one.

Update (5:51pm): Oh, I’m also closing my NetVibes and Gmail tabs, so I apologize if I take longer than usual to respond. However, I’ll still be on Meebo!

Recently, some folks have taken it on themselves to block Firefox users, directing them a page titled, Why is Firefox blocked? The reason, of course, is that Firefox allows the use of Adblock, an extension that allows users to block advertisements of all types (images, Flash, etc.). And, since Firefox does not reveal who is using Adblock, these people have decided that everyone using Firefox should be disallowed from the use of their sites.

As a Firefox user (along with Opera, Camino, Safari, and IE7), and one who frequents the Internet, I have to wonder what kind of damage is really being done by Adblock. For those using text advertisements, or good graphical ones that do not detract from the overall experience on a given Web site, I am happy to leave the Ads alone (remember, it takes work to remove them). It’s when ads cause me so much displeasure (Punch the monkey!, Win a free iPod*, YOU’RE ALREADY A WINNER!) that I can’t use the site and I take action (I don’t have Adbock, I handle it differently.).

I really feel that this whole endeavor stems from Web sites utilizing a dying business model. Horribly bright ads just don’t cut it on today’s Internet. Don’t get me wrong, I think advertising is one of the best revenue building solutions on the Web now, but you don’t have to be gross about it. While it’s only generating minuscule amounts of cash, the Google Ads at Comics Convergence were considered as the design was built out, making them a design element, not a horrific eye-sore. In my humble opinion, tasteful inclusion of advertisements on today’s free Web sites is the next best step, along with Premium services.

As an aside, there are many, many ways to circumvent this issue. LifeHacker suggests changing your User Agent String and I took 7 seconds to find an Adblocking solution for IE7.

Hopefully, this will all blow over, and we’ll be able to look back on it and compare it to the RIAA’s inability to grasp the next stage of music distribution.

This evening, Matt B. and I took Christian C. out for a minimalistic Bachelor party, as he’s getting married tomorrow and he already had a 3-day Bachelor LAN Party. We hit up Big Al’s Bowling (and more), where we sped through $30 beating Time Crisis 4, and $25 on one game of bowling. I should say, though, that it was worth it. The three of us have had little time to hang out, and Big Al’s is quite a spectacle to behold. From a design perspective, it’s really, really intriguing, and it would be fun to just go and observe all of the little things that they’re doing both right and wrong. However, that’ll happen later; the bowling and gaming tonight was fun. And, I lost entirely at bowling (bowled an 81, I think… no thanks to Wii Sports!), but Christian won.

As for the rites of passage. Before this evening, I had yet to visit a Bar. I’ve tried drinks, been to places like Applebee’s and McMenamins, but never to an actual, 21-and-older, tab-keeping, pool-playing Tavern. (I actually could have with Matt Lohkamp last week for his birthday, but my schedule conflicted, sorry Matt.)

It was interesting, to say the least. I missed the social aspect, as we stayed to ourselves, but I’m not one to be social with strangers, so I rather appreciated that. We started off with some Billiards, but I wasn’t too keen on playing, so Matt and Chris played several games. I also designated myself the DD, as I’d never been one (officially). Granted, all they had was a round of Rum & Coke, but still… And I got to put it on a tab, which I left open; we didn’t get anything else, but that wasn’t the point. Surprisingly, it was only $3.50 per drink, which was rather nice. It must have been happy hour.

The night ended on a fairly good note. They ended up coercing me into playing a round of Cutthroat Pool, which, I’m happy to report, I won. We played again, and Matt won, but it was still fun.

All in all, the bar we visited (Charlie’s Tavern, in Vancouver) was nice enough, and it reminded me very much of the Bar frequented in the TV series Scrubs. Granted, I’ll never drink like Dr. Cox, but it may be fun to actually get a drink; that drink would probably be closer to an Appletini, light on the Tini, than Scotch on the rocks. But the fact that I want to go back, shoot pool, and get a drink is very, very surprising to me.

For a long, long time, I’ve always struggled with developing on my 12″ PowerBook G4. The form factor is the most glaring issue, with its tiny keyboard, touchpad, and 1024×768 resolution. Compared to my desktop, I’ve always felt super slow, and fairly silly as I tried to write code.

Recently, as I’ve found the joy that is Apple’s Xcode, I’ve been spending several hours at a time, coding with my little Mac. And, honestly, I’m getting hooked on it. Last night, from 12:00am – 5:00am, I built out an ActionScript 2 Digital Signage Display application that managed XML for its preferences and file references, in a self-sustaining class—and I swear it was easier than developing on my desktop. I utilized TextMate and Flash 8 Professional, and was quite the happy camper. The syntax highighting in TextMate is gorgeous, Flash’s help was easy enough to manage with my keybard, and Alt+Tab & Ctrl+Tab became extremely important quite quickly.

I’ve now spent another several hours in Xcode, and while the UI could use a little extra work (like a tabbed document interface), I’m able to jump through all my files, compile, test, and edit with just a few keystrokes.

Earlier this week, to Ryan, I said I had a really hard time developing on anything beside my desktop, but I’m starting to think that I just never gave my whole Developer-self to the small-scale, keyboard-driven laptop development experience.