A day in the life of me

Syndication for blog.austinmcgee.com

2008-11-13T04:07:28Z

For those of you still on Livejournal and want to view my blog on my website through the friend's service, feel free to add austinmcgee as a friend to get updates. I'm still posting only over there, but I figure this will help some of you out a bit.

I've moved! Goodbye Livejournal

2008-08-30T18:08:43Z

I've moved to http://blog.austinmcgee.com. I find I've been disliking what Livejournal has been doing lately, and even though I have a permanent account, I just feel like now is the right time to move over. I'll still be checking everything I have on here for quite a while, but for now, I don't think I'll be writing anymore posts here.

I need some sad music

2008-08-27T03:51:01Z

Anyone got any suggestions? Something heart wrenchingly sad and depressing. I'm talking on the level of Nine Inch Nails - Hurt.

You will be missed Summer

2008-08-01T05:17:14Z

It is raining. In the last day of July. Goodbye Summer, I hardly knew you.

Die in a bear twitter

2008-07-02T04:18:21Z

I've really, really come to despise twitter. For those that don't know (and count yourselves lucky), it's a cross between instant messenger and blog software that is then posted to the internet. It has a maximum character count of 140 characters (due to a single text size limit) and is generally a stream of consciousness instead of a well thought out post.

What happens more often than not is something comes out that might be funny or interesting to the person writing it, but means absolutely nothing to someone else reading it. 140 characters is hardly enough for a well thought out discussion, writing, diatribe, or anything else, really. I've noticed several people switching to this format because it's an easier way to post something and not have to work so hard. Lazy fuckers. Seriously, I hate reading your twitters, and it's not fun, so for the love of all that is good and holy, stop. Just stop. It's not cool, it's not ingenious; it's novel at the best. Its time has come and gone (all two weeks of it).

Construction workers

2008-06-30T22:30:36Z

Something I've noticed, especially recently, is that there always seems to be a 1:1 ratio of people actually working on a construction site, and people watching the people working. I've never understood why this phenomenon actually exists because I've never worked on a construction site, but every single time I pass one (or just workers outside in general), they always seem to be doing nothing about half of the time.

For instance outside of my work they're replacing the railroad tracks with new tracks. It's a pretty interesting process with them having to lift huge sections of the track into place with a gigantic fork lift, position them, and then finalize their place. They have about 4-5 people working fairly regularly, but then they also have around 4 people literally just standing there and watching them work. They didn't do anything for the 10 or so minutes I was taking a break. Is it part of the culture of construction to do this? Are they on break? Are they required by law to have a certain number of people around just in case someone gets their head cut off so they can replace them? I don't know. It kind of bothers me in a wasteful sort of way, but then again, I probably don't know what's going on and am using my jump to conclusions mat liberally.

TSA

2008-06-24T20:36:45Z

I've been reading the TSA Blog since it started a couple of months ago, and the more I read it, the more depressed I get. Oddly enough, I don't get depressed because of the comments; I get depressed because of the lack of comments by the people in the actual TSA. Some people make very good points and are completely ignored. The posts by the TSA employees clearly show that they have no understanding of how reality works, or (and more frighteningly), they do, but don't care because they're toting the party line.

I'm really quite bothered by some of the things the TSA is doing. I don't feel any safer (actually, I almost feel less safe) and I'm bothered more and more every time I go to the airport. Since I fly quite regularly, it really pains me to have to deal with the bullshit that they require me to do, especially when I know that none of it helps.

I'm tired of this country worrying about terrorists and how they plan to blow us up. I would fundamentally rather live in a world where there was more risk than less freedom. I also know that giving up freedom does not make me safer, which makes me want it even more.

Le sigh.

Bossinabox on youtube!

2008-06-24T06:00:13Z

I randomly decided to search for Bossinabox (like I do maybe once every 4 months or so) and came upon this youtube video. Hilarious.

No more car

2008-06-06T20:32:15Z

Well, I finally did it. My car is gone. It was picked up by the tow truck to be donated to a charity this afternoon. I'm now a bus taking man! Not only will it save me a ton of money, but it's kind of relaxing in a strange way. I don't have to deal with the stress of driving around everywhere and my life slows down a bit. It's not too bad though considering my work pays for my bus pass. Good times.

I moved!

2008-05-29T05:40:50Z

I'm now officially renting my own place in Seattle. It's pretty bad-ass I have to say. I enjoy my alone time (all 3 hours of it so far) and it's certainly different, but nice. I have pictures of the place, I just have to upload them. Still... spiffy!

Oh Seattle...

2008-05-13T17:53:36Z

It is just absolutely miserable here today. Hopefully it'll be better this next weekend. Apparently it's supposed to get up to the 90s? One can hope.

Is That Peanut Butter?

2008-04-24T05:30:37Z

I finally started a new blog about video games and me making them at IsThatPeanutButter.com. I thought the name was catchy, so I set it up. Right now it just redirects to blog.austinmcgee.com, but I may change that later.

I've been programming a bunch on my own time and I really hope it keeps going. I always feel super productive when I do it and lazy when I don't.

Firefox is amazing part 23098

2008-04-22T16:59:42Z

I've finally figured out how to remove things from the address bar that either annoy me or exist only because I mistyped a domain. You highlight whatever entry you want and then press the Delete key. It seems so simple and gave me a "duh" moment, but my god, I've been trying to figure that out for AGES. I've been trying to right click and select a delete option or something, but that's never existed.

Regardless, huzzah!

Beautiful days

2008-04-15T20:47:26Z

I went rock climbing in Leavenworth on Sunday which was absolutely fantastic. It was probably the best climbing experience I've had outdoors so far. We left at around 8:30, got there at 11 or so, and didn't end up leaving until 5:30. I climbed some pretty hard routes and finished a couple as well, so I was pretty happy with how I did overall. I did manage to completely trash my hands, legs, and muscles though. Climbing outdoors is so very, very different from climbing in the gym. I'd almost say it's harder because there aren't easily marked routes for you to go. It is certainly more gorgeous though. Being in the woods with snow around you on a 75-80 degree day climbing big boulders is nothing short of amazing.

I have a bunch of pictures, some of which include me on said boulders which I'll have to upload and post sometime today (hopefully). I think a couple of them came out really well. I need to take my tripod next time, which I keep forgetting. I'm also jonesing for some new lenses, but that's so not going to happen if only because they're ludicrously expensive. I hear there might be one or two good ones I should pick up for $150 or so, but I'll have to talk to my camera expert friends before I go traipsing through that field.

My life has changed

2008-04-04T19:43:31Z

Firefox users, you should get Googlepedia. It has changed how I use my search engine. This plugin makes it so it searches google and wikipedia for the same search terms. Half of the searches I'm looking for are from wikipedia when I search google anyway, so I love it. Plus, more information is always a bonus.

I can't even think of going back to the way it was. It's such a smart little, unobtrusive plugin that I just had to spread the word about it.

Update: Apparently it also removes all of the ads from Google. I've never found them obtrusive before, but now that they're gone, it's even nicer!

The Golden Age

2008-04-02T20:14:09Z

I finished the trilogy of The Golden Age a day or two ago. While I had some reservations reading it at first because it used new terminology that I'd never heard of before, once I got into it I REALLY got into it. It was absolutely fantastic science fiction of a kind I've never read before.

I don't want to ruin it for people who haven't read the series, but how often have you thought about what rights people have when they're clones of someone. Do they have right to ownership of property since they're physically the same person? What if you're able to transfer minds? What if you can live forever?

A lot of very good questions that have very good answers in the books. It's not primarily about the questions I ask, but in the process of explaining the story the author happens to give answers to them since he's obviously thought about it a lot.

I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

Livejournal down the tubes

2008-03-18T20:02:19Z

I found out that Livejournal is no longer offering free accounts. This makes me incredibly sad. What makes it even worse is that brad, the founder, advised against this move. I really hate it when companies ask people their opinions and then just completely ignore it. It doesn't make sense to me.

What I also dislike are companies who try to maximize their profits so much that in the process they lose their userbase because of the change in how the company is run. The whole entire point of free (with no ads) accounts is that they bring in all of the content that the paying customers want to see/use. With no free accounts anymore without ads, I'm willing to bet that less people will come to the site, and in the process, a whole bunch of people that are already here are pissed about it. I'm seriously considering moving my journal now because of this. I'm worried that my protected and private entries are no longer safe from being looked at by the staff.

It's a slippery slope, and nothing I've seen from Livejournal since Brad has been gone has been going in the right direction. I don't see any more cool, bad-ass projects like memcache, openid, or any of the other millions of projects he's created and worked on coming down the pipeline. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong spot now, but it seems like a lot of people are leaving or just don't work on livejournal anymore that I think can steer the ship in the right direction.

Kind of sad, especially since I bought a permanent account a while back. I remember sending an e-mail to Brad telling him why I purchased it and how I hoped his open source, do the right thing, method would continue. Looks like this may not be the case for long anymore :(.

Update

2008-03-17T17:55:47Z

I haven't made a post in a while, so I figure I should rectify that.

I've been keeping busy at work, we're moving into slight crunch mode right now, so I've been in on the weekend once or twice. Nothing too bad yet, so I'm not terribly stressed out or anything, but I can see a bigger crunch coming down the road. It happens and as long as it's not too long I don't mind.

I've been programming at home again for the first time in a LONG time. I'm not just starting something and then getting frustrated with it and putting it down either. I've made a lot of progress on my configuration utility so far, which excites me quite a bit. Unfortunately, I've run into a weird issue with visual studio in which if you do a pre-build event (run the configuration utility), it won't allow the state of the build to change. In essence, I can't change the files and expect it to rebuild if the thing changing the files is part of the pre-build step. Lame. I've found a supposed workaround which is to have project A depend on project B and then have project B do the pre-build step for project A, which seems to work. The weird thing is that if I run it, std::ofstream claims it can't open the file to write it. I searched for a while to figure out if it can possibly give an error code as to why this is, but it doesn't seem like there is one. It sets a fail bit, but that doesn't tell me a damn thing. Lame. Hopefully once Habib gets back to me about how he managed to do it in Bossinabox (I can't figure out how he managed to do it even though I have the source code), I'll be able to get past that little problem. The weirdest part is if I run it from the command line (or anywhere else for that matter), it works fine... just not as a pre-build or post-build step.

I've been cooking much more lately, having made ratatouille, enchiladas, chile, and a quinoa casserole. I've been enjoying it much more since having gotten a bunch of vegetarian cook books from my parents for my birthday. I've been doing the cook on Thursday thing for the house again, which is nice. It gets me to try other stuff, especially since I've been letting them choose the meal instead of me picking it.

Climbing is going well; I can't wait for summer to come so I can go outdoors more. It's going to be fantastic.

Saw Say Anything in concert yesterday at Neumos, which was REALLY good. The bands before them were all just ok, but they really played well. I didn't care for their new stuff as much (probably because I don't know it nearly as well), but their older stuff was fantastic.

Lessig '08

2008-02-20T04:35:38Z

I'm not sure I can pimp Lawrence Lessig enough, but I've certainly seemed to try the past couple of years. He's the only lawyer (I suppose aside from Obama now) that I've actively supported and loved everything he's done. He's a board member of the EFF, he founded Creative Commons, and he's done many other things that I've fully supported. I've loved his books that I've read as well.

Anyway, he's now thinking of running for congress. I really hope he does as I think he could make a world of difference, but even if he doesn't, I'm still fully behind him. He's probably the first potential politician that I think I'd ever even seriously consider donating for.

Dota awesomeness

2008-02-06T20:31:41Z

If you don't care about Dota, don't bother clicking to see more.

I found these randomly while at work the other day and both of them are absolutely fantastic. Normally I'd link to the high quality videos, but they're hosted on some shit site like MEGA UBER DOWNLOAD WEBSITE which sucks donkey balls (like 30kb/s for me which would take several hours), so instead, here are the YouTube versions.

This is Vegas

2008-02-05T06:21:20Z

This is Vegas is announced! I'm pretty stoked about it as I've now been working on it almost 8 months. I hope everyone likes it!

Update
Shacknews story

Oh taxes how I love (but really hate) you

2008-01-27T00:58:59Z

I decided to try to do my taxes online after Lauren left this morning and I managed to just about finish them in 30 minutes or so. I haven't fully completed them because I'm still waiting on a form from one of my college loans detailing how much interest I've accumulated this past year, but even without that it looks like I'm going to be getting a nice heft check of $2600 back this year. I'm guessing it's because I've been paying taxes as if I were working a full year when I've really only worked a little over half of it. I was actually worried a little that I'd owe money this year, but thankfully that's not the case.

I'm pretty stoked about it and while I'd love to buy something like a big plasma or lcd tv to hang up in my room, the money will probably go right back into paying more of my loans. Kind of sad, eh?

I'm not really sure how I feel about the tax rebates that congress is trying to pass right now, even though I'd get somewhere around $300-600 as it stands currently. I'd love the money (of course), but I'm more interested in where that money is actually coming from and why they're able to pull it out of their asses and just give it back to us. I also worry about whether the video game industry will be stable if we do end up going into a much slower economy. I'm not entirely sure it'd affect me at all, but I worry slightly anyway.

I guess if I get laid off, I could always go get a job at Google ;).

Mass Effect and Fox stupidity

2008-01-25T23:01:33Z

I really wish that people would stop treating video games as something that can corrupt our children. What is even worse to me, however, is how the media reports on these things by barely doing any research and not actually playing the game at all. The person who was attacking the game had no idea what the game was about at all except for things she'd seen on youtube. Gross.

New awesome music

2008-01-19T21:36:44Z

I've fallen in love with Menomena. They are absolutely fantastic and their music video is exceptionally well done too. The whole album that I've listened to is great.

The second video from Cloud Cult is especially sad when you realize that the song is about his two year old daughter that died. It's practically haunting, but at the same time so utterly beautiful.

This live video of Nantes is equally cool. I love it when people can do a live performance and it just sounds GOOD. So much better than lip syncing. His voice doesn't sound like it should be coming from a body like that, but it is certainly great.

I grabbed these three from my coworker's Musical Advent Calendar. It's got a lot of good stuff on there. I would highly suggest checking it out for some new music.

Bossinabox fame

2008-01-11T06:58:06Z

I got home today and Habib called me all happy. I never talk to him on the phone so it was a bit odd, but he tells me that he just got the new Games for Windows magazine in the mail today and opened it up to see Bossinabox featured as one of the best 52 free games to download this year! Pretty bad-ass.

I'm excited to see what people say about the game I'm working on now. I hope people like it. I feel a bit close to it myself so it's hard to tell whether it's going to be good or not, but the people I've showed it to certainly like it. I can't wait to finally be able to talk about it, that's going to be so nice. I hate having to talk to someone and have them ask me "So what are you working on these days?" only to tell them "Seeeeeeeeeeecrets".

I got a piece of concept art from Blacksite: Area 51 the other day and I swear it looks like concept art for Assassin's Creed. I also got a Drakan poster that had been sitting around. I love getting free stuff :).