  Keeping your money safe | 
Posted - 3/27/2009 10:03:24 AM | I had a mild vapor-lock moment this morning reading one of my favorite "get rich slowly" sites. Turns out one of those convenient "attractive CD rate internet account" websites was an offshore ponzi scheme funneling cash to some crooks in California.
And it didn't scare me because I had money in it. It scared me because I have money in internet savings accounts. I have a couple of internet savings accounts holding my money and earning a little bit of interest (see my first-of-the-year entry for that) while I save up for things like Maggie's school, HSA, etc. Looking at the fake bank's website, it doesn't look much different from any other. And its CD rates are attractive at 5% and don't look like that ridiculous "50% return in six weeks" rate that Charles Ponzi quoted or even the "12% in a year" rate that allowed Bernie "is it too much to ask for you to fling yourself out of a window?" Madoff to surf the expanding economy for decades.
A 5% CD fits right into the "very good rate" without falling into the "too good to be true" territory that'd set off the red flags in my head. And if I had $10k that I could park somewhere for a year or two, I might've taken advantage of it.
So I have an action item for you today. If you have a savings account or a CD or any other kind of "safe" investment(s), send yourself over to the FDIC bank finder and make sure your bank is listed and has a current certificate. That way if your bank ever does an IndyMac, you'll be able to do what the IndyMac customers did, which was to head down to your bank and pick up your money.
The people who have CD's in that Millennium Bank aren't gonna have that luxury.
And, for the record, my internet savings account-of-choice is all insured. Actually, according to the FDIC it's been insured since 1934, which is the year the FDIC was chartered.
| |
| Many topics, as per the norm | |
Posted - 3/26/2009 10:58:49 AM | Seems like I make one post per week that consists of multiple topics that I can't cram into a 140-character Twitter. So I'll keep following that meme.
I've gotten no meaningful sponsorship offers from anyone for the new Flash Think Tank, so I'm just going to go with plan-A, which is to pull the site-lock and start uploading the thing to as many game portals as I can find and soak in a few bucks from ad-views. Seems like everyone running a game portal or a Flash promotion site is currently at GDC, so I don't think this'll get the quick traction that Pop Pies 2 got.
Not that I expected that anyway. Pop Pies has its own friggin' fan group on Facebook (and I didn't start it), so it was a foregone conclusion that PP2 was gonna get some eyeballs.
I got a request to submit a proposal for a Batman-themed game for the Mochi-WB contest. After getting a couple of my fears allayed by the organizers (i.e. am I gonna be making you guys a game for $4k that could potentially be worth more elsewhere), I put together a proposal for a game. Apparently they'll be contacting the winning entries sometime next week, so I'll find out then if I'm one of the people chosen.
I won't give away the whole plot, but my submission was a puzzle game with explosions. I've only made about six of those now. I think I'm getting into a rut :)
We're getting all self-sufficient over here at the compound. I planted four rows of onions that are happy as can be as well as some mint and rosemary that I'm hoping will take over a corner of the yard and choke out the other weeds. Mint is a weed itself, but it's a weed that smells nice and looks good floating on the top of your drink, so why not.
Shelly's planted a half-dozen other veggies with varying degrees of success. She started from seeds, so she's not getting the "instant gratification" I got from planting sprouts and watching 'em perk right up.
We did discover that the local herbivores don't like to wait for the peas to grow up before chowing down on 'em, so we might continue to grow them in the greenhouse.
We also started making some wine and cheese as a companion for the beer. Making mozzarella was easy and cheap (several pizzas worth of cheese from a $2 gallon of whole milk) and is awesome on pizza. The wine has been bubbling away for a week now. While I'm all for guzzling the whole batch right now, Shelly's on some weird kick about how you gotta let a wine age before you can quaff it. Dunno where she got that silly idea.
We're also about to bottle up another 50-odd bottles of homebrew beer. Let the depression hit. We got cheap brewskis!
Oh, and it wouldn't be a visit to the Bargain Basement Blog without a cheapass pennypinching tip. So here's the one for today. . .
Starbucks is my favorite respite for "Low Priced Luxury". It's a place where you can get something decadent that's not too bad for your health along with some wifi and/or a newspaper, all for under four bucks. It ain't a Lexus, but I don't like Lexus's anyway so I'll treat myself once a week to some foo-foo-coffee.
In the past, I'd order myself a latte, which is a shot or two (or three) of espresso mixed with steamy milk. And it's not cheap. It's around $3.75 for the large. Mind you, a large latte is a pretty filling breakfast with enough caffeine to make you break out in a sweat, so it's not too outrageous.
A little under a year ago, Starbucks introduced their "Pike's Place Blend" coffee as well as the "Misto", which is basically a latte made with brewed Pike's Place instead of espresso.
And IMHO it's 95% as good as their latte and a dollar cheaper.
My only warning is that you have to order these at actual standalone Starbucks stores. The Starbucks' that are built into your local grocery store or Target don't have the Pike's Place coffee on tap, and a Misto made with the old "house blend" isn't nearly as good. Not sure what it is, but the difference is noticeable.
Also check back here to navigate Starbucks' "free wifi" deal. As an added bonus, if you use a registered gift-card to buy your coffee, they won't charge you for a squirt of coffee flavoring (vanilla, hazelnut, etc).
And finally. Just so I can prove that this is indeed a programming blog. Here's a handy piece of code. Flash has had the ability to tint and color movieclip object forever, but the way it was done (at least in AS2) was always pretty hairy. It worked, but it requires about three steps to do the seemingly-trivial operation. Here's a nice little function that'll do the whole mess in one function call.
MovieClip.prototype.setTint = function (r, g, b, amount)
{
var colorizer = new Color(this)
var trans = new Object()
trans.ra = trans.ga = trans.ba = ([100] - amount)
var ratio = amount / [100]
trans.rb = r * ratio
trans.gb = g * ratio
trans.bb = b * ratio
colorizer.setTransform(trans)
}
It extends MovieClip, so if you have an existing movieclip, you can just paste this code in and colorize your objects like so. . .
myMovieClip.setTint(255, 0, 0, 50) // turn this object 50% red
So if you're making a Pac Man game and you want four colors of ghosts, you can just make one ghost MovieClip and tint each instance rather than some more difficult solution.
| |
| Me the cynic | |
Posted - 3/13/2009 9:48:27 AM | I got to see Jim Cramer on the Daily Show yesterday (google for it if you haven't heard of it), and I was reminded of that old interview that Dateline (I think it was) did with evangelist-crook Benny Hinn. They spent about 20 minutes rubbing Hinn's nose in his own ridiculous antics and his refusal to be transparent about his finances. Hinn sat quietly, then apologized for everything. He said his ministry would become fiscally accountable, and he'd tone down the nonsense that aggrandized himself to the detriment of his religion.
Then Hinn. . .did absolutely nothing. He went right back to his old shtick, confident that the public's collective-ADD would prevent them from being able to follow up on his promises.
And I felt that way with Cramer on the Daily Show. Cramer walked in the studio wearing his rolled up sleeve shirt (which I'll bet dollars to donuts are now sewn in place). He was chastened, promised to fix every flaw that Stewart presented, and then will go right back to ringing bells and pumping-and-dumping stocks on his show while pretending that he's doing it for anyone's benefit but his own.
On an entirely different note, I am amused by the new iPod shuffle and its infinite smallness and Apple's newfound need to eliminate buttons. And I finally figured out what it reminds me of. If you watched the last couple seasons of MST3K, you'll remember the Observers. . .
They were beings that were humanoid but were evolved billions of years beyond us. We were as amoebas to them, as they loved to say. They had, in fact, evolved themselves to the point where they no longer needed bodies and could just exist as disembodied self-sufficient brains.
And then they went even further, constructing host bodies to carry their disembodied brains around.
And so, despite having intellects that dwarf ours (and being more than happy to remind us of that), they didn't realize that their system of carrying their brains around in dishes was way more inconvenient than keeping their brains in their heads.
And that's the new iPod shuffle. It's evolved beyond the need for buttons, but for the sake of interacting with unterbeings such as ourselves, it'll keep around one or two buttons in an inconvenient place.
And Windows Mobile has a new slogan. "Yeah, our browser is kinda sucky, but at least it's got Flash."
Shelly made me a grumpasaurus.
His infinite ennui gives me comfort in uncomfortable times.
Then Maggie stole it.
Also Shelly took my ipod because there's somesuch piece of software that only it'll run. I now have the Sansa again, which doesn't bother me much. I much prefer Rockbox (google for it) to anything else, because it does everything right. It doesn't play games too well, but I got a laptop that plays games really well if I'm on the road and wanna play games.
Should I write another book? I could probably write the "game programming on 25 cents a day travel guide" that I've been threatening, as I have more experience in that than anyone, but computer book sales are flat or declining.
Get it published? Vanity-press it and make beer money off it? Slap it up on the web with a pile of adsense ads? Thoughts?
| |
| Shenanigans and goings on | |
Posted - 3/12/2009 9:19:01 AM | Oh so many things. The life of a renaissance man is never uneventful.
Item One
First off, I posted a very quick "how to fix your car's mats in 15 minutes for six bucks" tutorial here. MAKE magazine has a "mend it march" promotion, and I thought I'd contribute.
Item Two
Next, I got two more orange books which means I'll have another giveaway. I'll likely give away one right away and keep the extra slack copy in the hopes that I'll eventually have a full set of four to give away. Given that I didn't contribute anything to the black book content or editorial-wise, I'm not holding out hope to receive more copies of that one. We'll see.
Item Three
Next, the green book now has a picture on Amazon. I hope it'll be arriving next week. Fingers crossed.
(note to Drew, fix the picture on the book-page in gamedev)
Item Four
My dramatic reading from the blue book is now available at www.industrybroadcast.com. Be glued to the end of your seat as I regale you with tales of high seas adventure!
Item Five
I've officially released The Code Zone Retro Pack (i.e. all of my old 90's shelfware games that I could still find and for which I recently re-re-retained licenses). While the story of those games are an adventure unto themselves, as you'd expect from any software package that managed to stay in stores for TEN YEARS, getting back to re-compile on my new machine was no picnic. I basically had the following choices. . .
1. Install VC++ 6 (which was the last compiler used to make 'em), recompile the original sources, change up the about-box and credits and such to remove mention of the old publishers, and build a new installer.
2. Modify the StarView app framework (upon which the games are built), which itself hasn't changed in ten years, to work on a newer Visual Studio.
3. Dump the StarView app framework in favor of the OpenOffice Framework (which StarView became after Sun bought 'em out), modify the games to work with it, and recompile.
Seeing the easiest route as number one, as it'd just require changes to batch file names, I set about to installing VC++ 6 on Vista. Upon doing so, Vista popped up a box saying that my compiler was about ten years outta date, it's flagged as an app that doesn't play well with anything after Windows 2000, and that ship just ain't gonna sail.
Glee.
Being sly and wiley, I popped up Virtual PC and built myself a little Virtual Windows 98. VC++ 6 had no problem with it. A little wrestling with batch files and dependencies and all that other stuff that I haven't done in years, and I had a working build-chain again.
Then I dragged the newly-compiled games over to Vista, built a cute little NSIS installer for 'em, and they live again!
Check 'em out here to see 'em in all of their 256-color MIDI-soundtracked glory again!
Item Six
Think Tank is basically done. It's currently shopping for sponsorships, but if I don't get any bites it'll be scattered to the four winds. As a reward for actually reading this far, I'll let you try it out. It's here.
Note that this version is currently site-locked to thecodezone.com, so don't just grab the swf file and slap it up on your own favorite game portal. Once I'm confident that it's in as good a working order as it's gonna get, I'll make a distributable version.
Please please post feedback for the game. It's gonna go viral and once things go viral there's no way to make changes.
Dang, I had a lot going on this week. I need a rest.
| |
| I have a winner | |
Posted - 3/4/2009 9:58:59 AM | Thanks for the entries, people. Ultimately I had 27 people who followed the rules (add me and send me the message). And out of those 27 people, our winner was DecipherOne!
http://twitter.com/DecipherOne
Keep an eye on the Bargain Basement Blog, as I'll certainly have more books to give away!
| |
|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S | 1 | 2 | 3 | | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | | | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | | | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | | | | |
OPTIONS
Track this Journal
ARCHIVES
October, 2009
September, 2009
August, 2009
July, 2009
June, 2009
May, 2009
April, 2009
March, 2009
February, 2009
January, 2009
December, 2008
November, 2008
October, 2008
September, 2008
August, 2008
July, 2008
June, 2008
May, 2008
April, 2008
March, 2008
February, 2008
January, 2008
December, 2007
November, 2007
October, 2007
September, 2007
August, 2007
July, 2007
June, 2007
May, 2007
April, 2007
March, 2007
February, 2007
January, 2007
December, 2006
November, 2006
October, 2006
September, 2006
August, 2006
July, 2006
June, 2006
May, 2006
April, 2006
March, 2006
February, 2006
January, 2006
December, 2005
November, 2005
October, 2005
September, 2005
August, 2005
July, 2005
June, 2005
May, 2005
April, 2005
March, 2005
February, 2005
January, 2005
December, 2004
November, 2004
October, 2004
September, 2004
August, 2004
July, 2004
June, 2004
May, 2004
April, 2004
March, 2004
February, 2004
January, 2004
December, 2003
November, 2003
October, 2003
September, 2003
August, 2003
July, 2003
June, 2003
May, 2003
April, 2003
March, 2003
February, 2003
January, 2003
December, 2002
November, 2002
October, 2002
September, 2002
August, 2002
July, 2002
June, 2002
May, 2002
April, 2002
March, 2002
February, 2002
January, 2002
December, 2001
November, 2001
October, 2001
September, 2001
August, 2001
July, 2001
June, 2001
May, 2001
April, 2001
March, 2001
February, 2001
January, 2001
December, 2000
November, 2000
October, 2000
September, 2000
August, 2000
July, 2000
June, 2000
May, 2000
April, 2000
March, 2000
February, 2000
January, 2000
December, 1999
November, 1999
October, 1999
September, 1999
August, 1999
July, 1999
June, 1999
May, 1999
April, 1999
March, 1999
February, 1999
January, 1999
December, 1998
November, 1998
October, 1998
September, 1998
August, 1998
July, 1998
June, 1998
May, 1998
April, 1998
March, 1998
|
