c monkeys

unpacking is the suxor

jebus — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:54:36 +0000

unsecured wireless is awesome. I am finally in my new place, now I just have unpack all my crap. work is cool. xboxes, ps2s everywhere nothing like playing guitar hero or fight night at lunch or just whenever. guitar is cool, I totally suck at it but it’s a lot of fun. it’s currently the game of choice right now. the environment is totally different then any place I’ve ever worked at. no time sheets! everything is just very relaxed, you get your work done and you can do pretty much whatever.

I think I can top that…

random — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 05:59:23 +0000

Yah moving sucks… you know what else sucks? Car crashes! So today was the first day of my week off of work. Ask me how I spent my day… go on, ask! Oh it started well enough. Went downtown for a bit. So I was trying to leave a parking space on the side of the road. I do the usual things. There was traffic so I waited for it to pass. Once it was gone I shoulder check and the whole lane is clear. My signal is going the whole time, so I start to nose out a bit. I do this cause I don’t trust other drivers to not be bombing down, and this gives them enough time to brake, and enough space to avoid me. Does this sound over cautious or paranoid? Well wait for it. Anyhow I was barely moving, and just in the process of shoulder checking again when BANG! This guy hits me with enough force to bend my front wheel at like a 45 degree angle and push my car sideways three feet. I don’t know how fast this guy must have been going to cover that much distance in the time it took me to turn my head but there you go, so I currently don’t have a car but *do* have a headache to beat the band. Oh and it just keeps getting worse. I’ll probably have more fun and games stories tomorrow after my appointment with ICBC (thats the provincial car insurance company). Ah hell.

-SDZ

moving

jebus — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 17:36:03 +0000

moving sucks at the best of times. moving to another province is total crap. all kinds of little things keep popping up that we have to deal with. our insurance company doesn’t operate in BC because car insurance is run by the province so since they can’t screw you that way they figured why bother. we don’t have a place yet so we don’t have an address to forward our mail. bell also doesn’t operate in BC so we have to find a new phone company and internet provider. speaking of internet there seems to be only two providers in BC. there are tons in Ontario. I can’t go very long with internet either I tried it once I got the shakes after two days so internet will probably be the first service we get hooked up when we finally get a place.

oh happy day!

jebus — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:52:16 +0000

I’ve got some big news. I am joining Strati in Vancouver! I got my offer from EA last night so in a few weeks I’ll be moving out there. I can’t even begin to describe how excited I am. this is also good news for StratWars. Now that Strati and I will be in the same city hopefully we will get some more work done.

That’s what I get for posting late at night

random — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:12:38 +0000

Oh… I’m doing it again. I uhh made a bit of a mistake with the previous UB build. When I built it I forgot to set all of the switches to disable my experimental code. So here’s another one. The numbering is a bit odd here, since this is actually an older build that I made for myself to test out the whole UB thing. But I know it does render the old ships in the old way (so it will run a bit slower then the other version). Hopefully I’ll get to finishing this vertex stuff next week and then have an actual update. Again, sorry. I’ve got some time off coming to me and I’ve been thinking about all sorts of cool new features I can add to the saver. Most of them are actually fairly simple changes but I think they’ll really add something to the whole experience. And this isn’t more pie in the sky stuff… I’ve been slowly reminding myself how this code works and starting to get back to it. Feels really good to be working on something that I was there from start to finish on. More updates later. Oh and also some of you may have noticed there’s a bit of a lag between when you add comments and when they appear. We were having a bit of a bot infestation so we’ve had to set all comments to be approved before the show up. It’s a total pain, but what can you do. And I have to admit to being impressed with how many people do still hit back here. We’ll try and make it more worth your while.

-SDZ

Is there anybody out there.. out there.. out there

random — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 05:47:26 +0000

Well a few things to note. It appears that at least one person *does* still occasionally read this page… other then the people who post here who seem to read it rather narcissistically. And for those of you who have a Intel Macs I’m posting here a beta universal binary of the saver. It’s basically just a UB build of the development code I’ve got handy, so there’s nothing particularly amazing about it… and it might have some goofy stuff. In other words it’s a beta. Normal cautions apply.

-SDZ

But I still kind of hate the name

random — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 06:52:10 +0000

Ok, so I meant to post this earlier. Not like it matters since at this point I figure Joe is the only other person reading this anymore. For now I’m going to pretend people still read this and continue. Anyhow I finally got my new MacBook. I can finally say I have my own ICBM! I have to say I have almost no complaints about it. It really is an amazing machine. There were a few things I was nervous about when ordering it. First the new keyboard. And while I’m still getting really used to it, I can’t say it really bugs me. It’s not the best notebook keyboard I’ve ever used, but I can deal. The glossy screen worried me. If I’d had an option I probably wouldn’t have gotten it. Screen glare usually really bugs me. But so far, having used this machine under a bunch of different lighting conditions from natural light to a halogen lamp right over my left shoulder, and I haven’t noticed much in the way of bothersome glare. Which surprised me a lot since it is really glossy. I can see reflections in it when it’s off. One thing I have noticed is that the viewing angle is narrower then my old PowerBook. The other thing I was quite nervous about was the integrated video system. I’m a bit of a gpu snob and always turned my nose up at the integrated video solutions. But I also have to admit to being pleasantly surprised. Now it’s worth noting that I’m comparing this to my old 867 MHz PowerBook Titanium with it’s radeon mobility 9000. So not the hottest graphics going. In fact it didn’t support that cool wave effect for new widgets and played even remotely modern games rather poorly. So I can say that so far for every game I’ve tried, the MacBook does as well or better then my old PowerBook. And I’m talking about in Rosetta. Which brings up the really impressive cpu performance. The thing really is fantastic. I’ve also found it to be quiet, and not significantly warmer then the old Ti. So I’ve nearly got everything setup (even Windows… though since I despise rebooting I’m trying out Parallels virtual machine option… it’s cool, but the video is slower then I expected). Overall I’m really impressed with this machine, add the built in iSIght and man this thing rocks. I even ran StratWars in Rosetta using saverlab and it ran faster then on the old PowerBook (ok I’m saying that a lot). Oh and I got the Saver to build as a universal binary, and it runs amazingly. The only drawback is that I’m errr… still in the middle of implementing my damn vertex manager, so there are a couple of glitches that still need to be worked out before a release. But I gotta say the performance boost on these machines is impressive. Ok enough for now.

-SDZ

These are not the droids you’re looking for

random — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 14:50:27 +0000

First off, if you’re looking for KZed then you’ve gotten to the wrong place. Secondly for those actually trying to come here, hi. been a while I know. Frankly without my own computer (since mine died I’ve been sharing eeecch) I’ve lost the impulse to program at home. Add to that the crazyness at work and well… haven’t had much to say. But all that is about to change. A new MacBook should be winging its way to me and at the very least the thrill that accompanies a new machine should get a little programming out of me. Plus things have started to settle down and I’ve even got some time off coming to me. I’ve got to say I’m a little bummed about the video on the machine, and the name. I still havn’t gotten used to the name and it still strikes me as dippy. Mind you not Wii dippy, but still. Hopefully I’ll have things to actually say soon.

-SDZ

still here

jebus — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 00:39:07 +0000

just thought I’d post something. I been working crazy long hours lately. I am starting think i really do work for ea! I’ve been told for the month of march I put in 360 and change. even right now I am still at work. this project has been a total fuck up since day one and I can’t wait till it’s done. aawww fuck my import just failed that I’ve been waiting an hour for it to finish… I need beer. someone send beer….

Yes I do still have a job

random — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 06:54:30 +0000

First off I just want to say thanks to everyone who inquired, and or wished me good luck with the current EA uhhh ‘employment strategic readjustment’ that happened. I want to reassure you that, although it did hit my department, I do actually still have a job. In fact I am all kinds of employed. For over a month now already my team has been killing ourselves on some stuff for E3. I can’t really say any details about it except that it MAY involve a computer of some sort. Oh and that it’s had me working late (like 2am late) a lot lately. It’s good that I really like my job, but among the parts that suck is the fact that I really have had no time or energy to put the the old saver recently. And I’ve got some neat ideas of stuff to try, too. Ah well… at some point things will get back to normal. It’s really hard to complain about this though, all things considered. I’ll write more… maybe when I’ve had some sleep.

-SDZ