Archive for the 'Miscellaneous' Category

I just finished Half-Life 2: Episode Two again. Playing it through on my new computer was a real treat, and the ending of this episode still brings a tear to my eye. One thing jumped out at me for the first time on this play-through: the end credits. Valve has chosen to present the end credits in a short, yet elegant way. Every contributor is listed in alphabetical order by last name, with only a few notable exceptions (all the voice talent is singled out, for example). The result is a short, concise credits sequence that isn’t a bore to sit through. Compare this with the end credits for Call of Duty 4, which go on for so long that a rap song is performed to break the monotony (I believe the end credits are on the order of 3 or 4 minutes long in that particular title).

I’d really like to see more end credit sequences patterned after Valve’s design. Others may disagree, but knowing who did what on a project isn’t very important. Listing each contributor in a single group levels the playing field and gives everyone an equal measure of thanks.

Maybe I missed the memo, but I just don’t understand everybody’s sudden infatuation with Twitter. It seems as if everywhere I look, people are ‘tweeting’ about the stupid, mundane, and sometimes horrifying events in their daily lives. Does anyone here use Twitter? And if you do, why?

Last night, I spent several frustrating hours trying to untangle a problem with the update manifest for my Firefox extensions. After releasing my updated extensions, I noted that while CoLT automatically updated without any problems, Googlebar Lite did not. I double-checked, triple-checked, and even quadruple-checked everything I was doing. Everything I had done for CoLT was exactly what I was doing for Googlebar Lite. But the automatic update consistently failed.

As past experiences have taught me, simply walking away from the problem is occasionally all that is needed. Taking a mental break is a surprisingly effective way of going directly to a problem’s solution. And this is exactly what happened last night.

Being well past my usual bed time, and having made no progress towards a solution, I decided to call it a night, and so headed to the bathroom to take a shower and brush my teeth. As I stepped into the shower, the solution instantly occurred to me! I was incorrectly using a wild card in the minVersion value in my installer manifests (2.0.0.* instead of 2.0). Immediately after getting out of the shower, I rushed to test the solution. Lo and behold, it worked.

Sometimes, all it takes is walking away.

I’m going to try out something new here at the site; how well it does will determine if I continue to keep it up. Every so often (and I’ll only do this on an occasional basis) I’m going to post a list of ten items pertaining to some topic. Consider it a “top ten” list if you will. This is just for fun, and is intended to foster some discussion. The inaugural topic: favorite television theme songs. I got the idea for this specific topic from a recent episode of The Jay and Jack Ramblecast (hat tip: Dustin). Here are my personal top ten, complete with links to each theme:

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The English language has been sliding down the quality charts for a number of years now, and today it’s at an all time low. People’s grasp on grammar and spelling is tenuous at best. Take this story, for example. Note the sign in the picture (”Let are kids walk”). Are people really so ignorant that they would confuse the words ‘are’ and ‘our’? Sadly, this isn’t just a problem that surfaces in the general public. Professional editors are letting more and more errors slip by as can be found in this New York Times article on Jonathan Coulton. One sentence in the article reads “They pore over his blog entries…” Do you see the error in this sentence? I certainly hope so. I got this one wrong folks. Thanks to Kip for correcting me! The very next sentence should explain why I made the mistake.

I was taught somewhere between little and no English grammar in school. At certain points, I’ve tried to better my use of the language on my own, through books like The Elements of Style. But self education for this kind of thing just isn’t good enough (at least for me). I really wish I had been given a decent education on this stuff, and judging by the way people are failing to use English every day, I really wish educators took it more seriously.

Yesterday, my sister Hannah graduated from UNC, with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology (though she essentially crafted her own neuro-science major, a topic she is most interested in). She was only 1 of 3 people in her (very large) department that graduated with highest honors, which is a real accomplishment. It’s hard to believe that my little sister has grown up so much.

My main focus with this post, however, is one of great mystery. After the Psychology department ceremony (the last one we attended during the day), my grandmother, mother, sister, and I waited around the Old Well while my dad went to get our car. In a grassy area nearby, a group of people were putting on some sort of show for everyone. There were four “characters” in this show:

The Drummers

The first “character” was actually a group of three people sitting atop some African-style conga drums, each playing a consistent, though seemingly random, beat. Each one did this without stopping, at least for the entire time we were there (which was about 10 or 15 minutes).

The Purple Monster

This character was apparently controlled by two or three people, and stood 12 to 15 feet high. It was a purple being, with a large masked head and two large hands. It never moved from its spot, but swayed and danced along to the music from The Drummers.

The Thought Police

This character wore a giant green mask and hat, while carrying a blue baton. They also wore a trench coat, and spent most of their time chasing the next player around the grassy area.

Blue-Haired Person

This player wore a blue wig, a Carolina-blue gown (from graduation, apparently), and red pants. When they weren’t being chased by the “Thought Police,” they sat atop a “Corporate Ladder.”

No one spoke the entire time, which made this strange thing even stranger. The chain of events I could see where this: the Thought Police chased the Blue-Haired Person around for awhile, at least until the Blue-Haired Person climbed the Corporate Ladder. Once the person climbed the Corporate Ladder, the Thought Police left them alone, running around the Purple Monster instead. I took a few pictures of the characters:

• The Thought Police and the Purple Monster
• The Blue-Haired Person and the Drummers

Does anyone have any clues as to what this means? Seeing that this was in Chapel Hill, there was undoubtedly an implied political message, but I fail to grasp what it is. Irregardless of the message, the whole thing was pretty bizarre.

It seems that Papa John’s has “outsourced” the pizza ordering process. The past two times that I have called our local Papa John’s establishment, I was connected with an operator at who knows where. She took my order like the local folks normally do, but she clearly submits the order via her computer (”let me key in your order here on my computer,” she says). What clearly gives it away as a call center is the fact that the operator gives the actual address of the local establishment: “Do you want to pick up your pizza at [insert address here]?” The local folks never asked that in the past; it was simply “is this for pick-up or delivery?”

I’m not exactly sure why Papa John’s would want to send the ordering process to a call center. Is it simply to hire fewer people? Was our local establishment doing such a poor job that the corporation stepped in to help?

Has anyone else seen this behavior when ordering pizza? I’m not sure if this is just something at our local establishment or if this is a wider spread change. Either way, it’s very strange.