AltSci Blog

Nov 18, 2012

Sometimes you get more done by doing nothing at all. It's pretty rare, so you always want to do something rather than nothing. But some nights just don't go the way you wanted. Tonight I woke up at 1am wanting to do a little bit of hacking on my website. Everything was going alright. I only made 5 updates to the website.

update comments set moderation=5 where id = 1507606;

update comments set moderation = 0 where moderation <= -1 and (content not like '%http:%' and posted_by not like '%http:%' and subject not like '%http:%' and content not like '%https:%' and posted_by not like '%https:%' and subject not like '%https:%');

update comments set moderation=5 where subject = 'qdoiyQEAaWd';

update comments set moderation=5 where subject = 'ZNzbBCfWReAQVApO';

update comments set moderation=5 where subject = 'CxBCrAoBcAnBXxzvJ';

It was then that I discovered that I had lost useful data before a certain date. That's alright, it was intentional but I want the data back if I have it. It turns out that I have several backups of the data I lost. So I decided to create a database and import the data and do some easy database import if the data is just there.

Oct 29, 2012

I've been making excellent progress on my game. What you can see in the image below (way below) is random NPC colors, buildings, and GUI elements. The text outline isn't working like it should be, but that's not a big problem. All NPCs are animated and in this scene I'm rendering 100 at 60 FPS (it uses a lot of CPU, but it should be possible to improve greatly). The AI has been hooked up in such a way that you can talk to it. There's a bunch of stuff left to do, but I'm really enthusiastic about how far I am. I mean, all parts of the game are started. The graphics are poor, but I didn't set out to write a video game that was going to rest upon beautiful graphics. This game is special, it's going to have something that other games lack. It will be unique in so many ways, I doubt anyone will be able to say that it is yet another clone of <insert game here>. Of course I still am working my day job (and lots of hours as well), so it's bedtime instead of coding time.

Sept 17, 2012

I've been telling a few of my friends that I've been writing a game. I have an entire game engine with a tiny amount of gameplay sitting in my vault under the names "Hack Mars" and "AltSci Cell" (Cell is where this blog comes from).

I want to go back to Brasil next month for H2HC which is a simultaneous bilingual security conference. I've heard good things. It seems unlikely that I'll make it. I have a lot to do this fall and that would eat a month. It seems more reasonable for me to spend a month in January. You know what that means.

A month in Brasil! I am looking forward to it so much. I'm listening to Brazilian Portuguese everyday and I hope to learn enough to understand when I listen to a fast conversation. How do you do that? It's difficult. My plan is to immerse myself before I go. I'm going to read 1 paragraph per day and I'm going to listen to 2 hours of Brazilian Portuguese per day. That might not sound like a lot, but when you're working and your brain feels like it's stretching to soak up more information, 3 hours is going to be really difficult.