everburning

I stumbled across PeepCode last night. While it looks like a porn site it actually isn’t. Well, maybe geek porn. They sell programming videos on various topics. I watched a few of the free snippets and they were pretty good so I picked myself up a 10 pack.

I’ve got six of them downloaded at the moment:

• Rails From Scratch part I
• Rails From Scratch part II
• Test-First Development with Rails
• RESTful Rails
• TextMate for Rails
• RJS Templates

I watched the TextMate for Rails video last night. The production quality is really good and he gets through a lot of the TextMate commands and features. I’ll have to watch it again as there are so many different TextMate keyboard commands.

The videos come without DRM and they provide normal sized (I watched them fullscreen on my laptop and there was no pixelization) and iPod sized if you desire. I love the fact that I can download them and store them on my server at home. No need to watch them on the site every time. They all come with full source code used in the video and some have extra little PDFs and resource link collections to give you more information on the subject.

So far, really well done. I’m just waiting for a few more to come out as I’ve got 4 credits remaining. (Although I’m considering getting the JavaScript with Prototype.js video.

As a side note, while I was watching the video I noticed a text editing program, which I can’t remember the name of in the background. The website for that editor pointed me to Scrivener which looks kinda interesting if you’re a writer.

I’m finally, finally, back in Warcraft again. After umpteen patches and too many hours to count I can play again. As is my usual habit when coming back after not playing I’ve created a new character on a new server.

This time I’m Dalrei, the Night Elf Hunter on Ravenholdt.

I’ve played with a new character on the same servers as my other characters but I ended up mailing my new character the money and bags and stuff from the old character. I then used the old as a kind of bank to do all the auction house work.

This feels kind of, icky, to me. There is something you lose in the game when you start out with a couple 12 slot bags. You lose that sweet, I just found a 6 slot bag feeling. That decision on what to buy since you have no money.

I must have 12-15 characters scattered over a half dozen servers by now.

Anyway, we’ll see if I decide to renew my account. It expires on Tuesday (I cancelled it last week).

Or, maybe Bioshock will actually work when I try to play it tomorrow.

I picked up Bioshock for my Xbox today and seem to be having nothing but trouble. I stuck the game in and started watching the intro screen and…..crash. Restart the system and it won’t get past the Xbox logo at the start. Rebooted a few times and got the dreaded Red Ring Of Death.

Luckly, after reading: The Red Ring of Death I discovered I had the full ring version which just means your cables are loose. So, I unpluged and repluged, cursed Stacy for hunting for cat treats behind the TV and started to load again.

Load it up and…crash. Even before the intro started this time. This was a terrible screaching, flashing screen, garbage crash. Ok, bitch. Stuck in Oblivion and that seemed fine so I figured I’d give it one last chance. This time seemed to be going pretty well. Got the game up, started playing, put about 30 minutes into the game and…..crash. This last one is apparenty known, seen by a few people over at the GameSpot forums. I was moving between biospheres when it happened.

Figuring OK, that’s enough screwing around with this tonight I’ll play some Warcraft. Now, I started to load this onto my laptop last night. I installed the game, took about 45 minutes. I didn’t bother to install Buring Crusade as that would just take longer. Start the game and patch download starts. OK, fine. 450 meg to go then I can play. 30 minutes later I spend 10 minutes while the patch installs. Boot game and it starts to down load another 400 meg patch. 30 minutes later I spend 10 minutes while the patch installs.

I was way bored at this time and didn’t feel like playing Warcraft anymore so I went back to fiddling with flickr. Anyway, I loaded the game up today to play and….patch download. It’s in the middle of a bloody 390 meg patch.

Sweet mother of god, can’t you just make one bloody patch to get me up to date? Or, be smart enough to download them all at one time instead of me having to start the game and get dropped out again?

And on the 4th day, god said, No fucking gaming..

I swear, that’s a direct quote.

Warcraft update…It finished the 390 meg patch. It then downloaded a 3.9 meg patch. Then another 4 meg patch. It’s now downloading a 42 meg patch.

Warcraft update 2….And then a 4.94 meg patch. Then 1.8 meg to update the tools and launcher. Then 1.7 meg to update the tools and launcher again.

Warcraft update 3….I, finally, got into the game. To be informed that my account has Burning Crusades set on it so if I want to play I’d better bloody install Burning Crusades. So, off I go for a 40 minute install.

Warcraft update 4….With Burning Crusade installed I start my treck back into the World of Warcraft only to be shot down by…what the fuck….it’s re-installing the 390 meg patch I already installed. At least it was smart enough to not delete the patch off my system so I didn’t have to re-install it. (As a programmer, it makes sense that it would have to re-install, I just wish before it installed it the first time it had been smart enough to tell me that I’d have to install Burning Crusade anyway and then the patch.)

Warcraft update 5…Of course, once that patch finished the 20 minute install session it has to rerun all the other patches it had installed after it. The two 4 meg patches down, it’s working on the 42 meg patch.

Warcraft update 6….The 42 meg out of the way, it redoes the 4.9 meg patch and proceeds to the 2 patches for the tools and updaters.

So, I finally broke down and setup a Flickr account. I’m been uploading some of my images last night and using the flickr uploader program makes it really nice to get the stuff up there and tagged. It has a few shortcomings but works pretty well over all.

If you’re looking for my images they’re now at dj2’s photos on flickr.

With that setup I’ve finally, only a year after the wedding, got some of the wedding photos uploaded.

Stacy and I went down to Fan Expo 2007 for the day. It was quite entertaining. I always find it amusing, and sometimes scary, to see the amount of work people put into their costumes.

Some look really good. Some look like cheap hookers.

The only thing I got was a nice wooden practise sword. Considered buying some anime but held out in the end.

I was quite suprised when we got there by just how self organized the convention goers were. The lineup to get in was, I think, about an hour long. It had managed to set its self up in that sort of zig-zaggy fashion they normally do with bars and rope except, in this case, there were no bars and rope, people just did it.

All in all a good time. I’ll have to try to remember the date better for next year so we can pre-order tickets to skip the lineup.