• A few updates
    9/22/2008 6:47:04 PM
    Posted by: Dave

    Not a long post here, just a quick update... as you've probably already noticed, I did some style work on the site, which went hand in hand with the addition of blog comments. Slowly but surely, my site is turning in to what I want it to be, and now you can yell at me readily if something sucks. Happy surfing!

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  • Games that should exist (but don't... yet)
    8/18/2008 8:34:46 AM
    Posted by: Dave

    What with the new computer and all, I've been getting a little game-happy lately. I've had a chance to catch up on several series that I'd previously been left in the dark about, because my laptop simply doesn't have the graphical power to run anything beyond Command & Conquer: Generals, and even that is a stretch. Anyway, what follows is my (hopefully) brief venture into game reviews/rants. Enjoy!

    1) Age of Empires
    Yes, I'm well aware that AoE3 is out, along with two expansion packs. I don't qualify it as a true AoE game. Why? Because it makes the game needlessly complex. The original AoE had it right: four resources, one type of worker unit that could gather any of them, build/repair buildings and vehicular units, and die very easily. Balancing your acquisition of these resources was half of what made the game so much fun. You could go nuts harvesting gold and use it to buy other resources, but gold in itself was a f

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  • Windows XP Service Pack 3
    8/1/2008 8:08:13 AM
    Posted by: Dave

    What a shame... I've heard so much good news about it, that I was rather anxious to get it installed and see what the hype was about. And what better opportunity could I have than to get it installed on a brand new computer?

    Everything started off fine. I got the machine running, I got XP Pro installed, and I ran Windows Update to get up to date. SP3 was one of those updates. Everything downloaded and installed just fine, so I did the customary update reboot and started loading up on drivers for all the hardware I have. Mouse, keyboard, webcam, video cards all went without a hitch... but the sound card was a different story. It's a SoundBlaster X-Fi card, designed for high quality surround sound, but for some reason, it couldn't see the card itself. I had no sound, and Windows Media Player couldn't even play anything. It kept erroring, telling me there was no suitable sound device found. I figured that may have been something dumb with the install, so I pulled that

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  • From the land of confusion...
    7/24/2008 1:17:11 PM
    Posted by: Dave

    ...comes the spark of inspiration. Maybe. Sometimes great ideas come from confusion, but the implementation tends to rely on bashing the problem repeatedly until it decides to work. Such is how things tend to go with me and development. We (myself and my superiors at work) analyze a new system for how it needs to work, run into something that wasn't initially thought of, and wouldn't you know it, a brilliant idea arises. The responsibility then usually falls on me to make it a reality, which is generally a lot easier said than done. The majority of what I've done recently is all client-side functionality, so lots of JavaScript and AJAX. As clean as it operates when it's done, it can be a real bitch to get working properly, especially with such a loosely typed language as JavaScript.

    Anyway, I'm writing this one more out of boredom than anything else, but that's OK. I may as well give you a little list of what my update plans are.

    Firstly, some people might have noticed th

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  • Hello world!
    3/21/2008 7:52:37 PM
    Posted by: Dave

    Hi there, and welcome to my site! Again, for those who pay attention... anyway, this is round two. I'm up with new hosting, DiscountASP.NET, and so far, I have been very satisfied with the level of service they provide. The site is rather barren right now, but fear not, for I'm on vacation! I'll probably work on it quite a bit during my time off, so don't get too disgusted too quickly. It'll get better, no worries. Oh, and thanks for stopping by!

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