Tech Tip for the Day

04.04.2013

If you find yourself converting documents that are image heavy into PDFs, and random images end up looking jagged:

• 1. Install about 6 different PDF converters.
• 2. See the same problem in each converted PDF?
• 3. Double check the zoom when viewing the PDF.
• 4. 107% may introduce jaggeds.
• 5. Change to 100%. Ahh, pretty.

20+ alleged years programming experience and I still waste way more time than I want to admit tracking down little things that are perfectly fine if I would just pay a little more attention.

Permalink programming/interweb

1.8 million files

03.29.2013

As a continuation of Wednesday, I've got hard drives set up all over the place and am in the process of putting everything where I'll think to look for it. While I'm doing that, I'm deleting duplicates of files, especially out of date copies. It's amazing how I've stuck things in places over the years and completely forgotten about them.

Along the way I've learned that I can't run a quick format on a network drive for a quick and easy "delete all". I have to select everything and then delete it. Windows doesn't like deleting things that way. Windows likes to think about it first. "You want to delete these files? I'm going to look over them first and see if I have any questions. After that, I'm not going to mark the space as available like I have for the past 20 years, I'm going to do something that will take a lot of time. Oh, and I'll randomly pop up some 'Are You Sure' alerts just to slow things down."

It should never take an estimated 14 hours to delete files. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two to delete files. I don't know if it will take 14 hours as I'm about to go to bed and fully expect at least 2 of those delete boxes to greet me in the morning asking if I'm sure I want to delete Thumbs.db.

After all of that, I've still got half a terrabyte of TV shows to move to one of the newly vacated drives. I've also got to copy of a backup of my newly restructured and streamlined drives from which all of this deletion is the product.

At least the friggin' drives are working!

Permalink programming/interweb

March Back Up

03.27.2013

Today is Day 3 (or maybe 5) of me messing with computer hard drives. It's basically another case of me going overboard when one little things goes wrong, which in turn makes all kinds of other things go wrong.

I've got 2 NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices hooked up to my network. Why? So I can plug in lots of hard drives. Between those 2 NAS I've got 8 hard drives. 1 of them started to go bad last week. I'm not sure how bad it was going to get, but one morning when I looked the drive showed 1 folder and it was empty. The statistics showed that the drive was still 80% full, but nothing appeared when I opened the drive. After fussing with it for a while I finally rebooted the NAS and everything popped back up. The drive had been acting funny (if I searched for anything on the drive that took more than 20 seconds Windows Explorer would crash) so I took this as a sign to replace the drive. From there I went to Amazon and ordered a replacement drive. While there, I decided to go ahead and replace the 2 360GB drives in the other NAS with 1.5TB drives to match the other 2 drives already there.

When the disks came my trouble started. Replacing the "bad" disk went without a hitch. Old drive out, new drive in, we're good to go. Replacing the 360GB drives.... let's just say that I started this Monday, and just now I've finally gotten all the drives to show up and are accessible. They're all blank (2 of them used to have files), but thanks to my anal need to save files in multiple places I can move most things around to how they were. As it is I'm not missing anything important.

Once files are moved and copied, I'm going through and deleting the outdated duplicates (I don't need Palm Pilot drivers any more). While I could do this before moving files, I want the final layout where things will be, and then I'll delete the files from the places I don't want them to be.

People with a laptop just surfing the web probably don't run into this problem very often. I suffer so you and they don't have to.

Permalink programming/interweb

A symphony of links

03.24.2013

I started to send the below as an email to Jerry, but that would be cruel if the links didn't show up as actual links in his email. It's cruel enough as it is, but I thought I would share with everyone else that stumbles across the 'Mania.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered http://www.artscow.com/ClientDesigner/Designer.aspx?DesignId=105317569, which is really just http://www.artscow.com/photo-gifts/blanket/fleece-blanket-medium-595 with http://pworkwargame.blogspot.it/2010/11/prodotto-outlander-mat-120x180-cm-48x72.html after a little modifications (had to get it down to under 15MB) for use as "ground" when gaming. It arrived yesterday and while it doesn't look as good as I hoped, it doesn't blatantly look like a http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-16332/Moving-Boxes/Camouflage-Moving-Blankets?pricode=WU329&gadtype=pla&gclid=CIfMgsndlbYCFQ70nAodLH4A4A.

This stems from my growing to desire to play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2RAxRXDpwI since I've been racking up on http://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/rasslor?searchstr=dust+tactics&rankobjecttype=subtype&rankobjectid=1&columns=title|thumbnail|version&searchfield=title&geekranks=Board+Game+Rank&ff=1&subtype=boardgameexpansion>http://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/rasslor?searchstr=dust+tactics&rankobjecttype=subtype&rankobjectid=1&columns=title|thumbnail|version&searchfield=title&geekranks=Board+Game+Rank&ff=1&subtype=boardgameexpansion and thinking it might not be such a bad game. I've been thinking more of terrain along the lines of those http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/item/C1234/page/1 that I've had for a while. Instead of just making them and tossing around, I should put them on a http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=79_80 of some type. But then I saw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_FU-7aAoKI. Although what the dude is doing seems needlessly overcomplicated with an http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/EggCarton2.jpg, I liked his use of http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/Sheets.htm to make the base. Custom cut the base, add leftover http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5242/5210258111_a6aee05ab0_z.jpg and bam, you got a http://fabricfolliestwo.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/page01_005.jpg?w=640.

Later, once finding styrene at http://www.hobbytown.com, I went back to looking at videos to find what thickness to use to make a good base. It took a while to stumble upon the correct video again. While stumbling I saw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDkSp5VMkz4, which led me to decide that I really needed http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064RFHHO. It should arrive http://www.tuesdaymorning.com/media/tuesdaymorning/images/content/logo.png, although I doubt I'll actively do anything with it for a while.

Permalink random

More Stores for Your Zombie Shopping Pleasure

03.19.2013

I've been making more Zombie Mall progress. After another update to the rules I went back and worked on the map that people will be able to download and print in order to play the game. I've got a big 30"x40" map. but it's not very practical to print. I could break it up into 8½"x11" sheets which would make it more printer friendly, but I find those a royal pain to put together. Plus, everyone would be stuck with the layout that I made, and I've always envisioned the map to be modular so that each game could be different.

When I put the big map together, I made 6"x6" stores thinking that would be nice and modular. I forgot about the mall sidewalks. And corners. If you don't have 6"x6" walkways (I was planning on 3" wide) the modularity part of that plan kind of falls apart. I went back to the drawing board and eventually decided to stick to a 6"x6" modular tile, but I would include the walkway on the tile. With this, a 2" wide walkway would be the norm for matching up tiles. A little more narrow than what I originally thought, but it kind of helps with the "Oh no zombies are after me/How will I ever get away?" feeling. Using the original 6"x6" stores as templates, I went back and made 6"x5" stores (for the average store) and 5"x5" stores (for stores on the corner, with a walkway on 2 sides). 38 tiles later, I consider myself 99% finished.

I need to go back and make stores that will fit on the outside corners. I think these may only have 1 space of walkway, so the entrance may look a little funky. I need to play around with the tiles I've made and see how everything fits together.

With the above I've made the walls on the map bigger. Thick black lines are hard to miss, so I added in a concrete texture in the core of the wall, along with some shadow effects. The wall cuts into the available space more, but I'm hoping most people see it as a slight perspective shift and having some things hidden that are up against the wall won't seem weird.

I've still got a list of things to do to finish up the downloadable version of the game. Granted, there's still more play-testing to go (I just keep putting round 3 off, trying to get as many fixes as I think are needed in first). None of my tweaks affect play, they just make the initial rules comprehension a little easier. At least I think it'll be easier.

Permalink game dev zombie mall