Author

Message

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-08 13:22:16.000

Seriously, guys.

It's getting lonely in here.

Please post something, to let me know you weren't all figments of my imagination.

Ajar

Posts: 2413

Posted on: 2013-02-11 09:27:27.000

<- not a figment

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-12 15:35:30.000

Okay, that's one of you. What about everyone else?

PaoloM

Posts: 1

Posted on: 2013-02-13 16:57:31.000

Uh.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-13 22:27:02.000

Yay Paolo!!!

How's it going?

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-02-15 14:59:46.000

Although I'm here, that does not eliminate the possibility that I'm an imagination figment.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about your startup in due course. You're definitely a person who should have a startup.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-15 18:57:32.000

Thanks, Lois... assuming you're not imaginary Lois. :)

I've started building the product, although there's not much there yet. I've also thought of a completely different idea that I may just do at the same time, because, why not? Oh and I think there's a third thing in there that I already started.

So I'm well focused!

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-02-16 16:48:30.000

Why not have 3 ideas? That sounds like a bare minimum, actually. I'm sure there are many more in development :).

Have you thought of getting involved with all the various startup communities in Vancouver? Might you consider an incentive to move your startup to Texas :) (seriously there are a bunch of these)?

Ajar

Posts: 2413

Posted on: 2013-02-19 07:02:52.000

I have a hard time seeing JR in Texas. :P

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-19 08:25:56.000

Yeah, I don't think I'll be going there. I have neither a gun rack nor the multitude of guns that would necessitate owning a gun rack.

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-02-25 09:01:06.000

Ha, ha.

I noticed this today (in Startup Digest), for tomorrow:

Vancouver Open Coffee Club
Tuesday, February 26 @8AM - 9:30AM | Nelson the Seagull - 315 Carrall Street, Vancouver

Open Coffee Club is a casual gathering of people involved in founding, operating or funding startups. The format is similar to Startup Drinks, but in the morning and with coffee.

=====
You might want to sign up for Startup Digest for kicks. I am subscribed for several cities. http://startupdigest.com/

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-25 09:05:02.000

Cool, thanks for that. I've signed up. That coffee thing is pretty early in the morning though!

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-02-25 12:31:42.000

It is early! For me, it's a 10-minute walk, and I may show up, but haven't decided.

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-02-26 11:59:52.000

I didn't make it today!

This is the type of financial incentive I mentioned for Texas:
http://www.capitalfactory.com/2013/01/19/move-your-startup-to-austin-for-free/

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-02-27 10:00:04.000

Ah, I see what you mean. I don't want to leave Vancouver, though-- I love it here. At this stage of the game I don't have any employees (other than myself) and my problems are not the need for startup cash, but the need to identify a market with potential income and addressing it. I have some ideas but I need to do some testing to see if there is actual interest.

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-03-04 12:08:00.000

Sounds very cool.

Just posting this, although I have no idea if it's relevant.
https://cloud.google.com/resources/startups/

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-03-04 12:09:09.000

It's pretty cool of Google to do that, although I have my own App Engine that is very fast, runs very nicely and for free in perpetuity. :)

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-03-04 12:10:31.000

It's nice that of all the things I have to worry about, actually building the application is not one of them. I can effortlessly build whatever application I want. If you look at the top right hand corner of my blog's main page you can see I've started a whole bunch of new sites just in the last month.

Now the hard part: finding a target market, monetizing that market, advertising, and growing the business.

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10468

Posted on: 2013-03-05 03:13:28.000

AYB has always been a figment of your imagination.

Didn't you know?

:?

:sailormoon:

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-03-07 10:38:19.000

If you have a moment, curious about your thoughts about these articles: http://www.veracode.com/blog/2013/01/brogrammer-killed-the-requirements-engineering-star/
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/05/1755216/developers-may-be-getting-50-of-their-documentation-from-stack-overflow

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-03-07 11:46:36.000

For the "brogrammer" post, it raises an interesting question of whether companies value quality work over fast and cheap work. However, it falls down when it brings out the old chestnut of comparing software to bridge building. I feel one of the commenters answers this best:

[quote]
For some reason, people love to compare the process of writing software to the construction of bridges and houses. The big difference is that the end-goal of the software is frequently not understood at the beginning of a software project, in the same way it is for the construction industry.

Not only do the software engineers not understand exactly what they’re building, neither do the people who asked for it, or the people managing the process. This leads to inevitable change in requirements across the development process.

If construction engineers had to build houses, no wait, bridges, no wait, house-bridges, no wait, house-bridge-swimming pools… then they would fail to build anything that worked at all. Note that this is an analogy failure, not a failure of construction or software engineering. They are different domains, with different challenges.
[/quote]

Overall, it’s evident that for most software applications (software for the Space Shuttle notwithstanding) the agile approach is superior, simply because the customer/client does not know what he/she wants in the first place. It’s better from a business standpoint to be able to rapidly adapt than to build a flawless, high-quality product that nobody wants.

As far as the "brogrammer" epithet, I think it’s a little demeaning (and sexist!) After all, it’s the company’s decision what kind of programmers they want, and if they want more rigorous and high-quality software then they have to accept the responsibility for hiring, training, and fostering an environment where such things are rewarded. They also have to accept the fact that it will mean software is developed more slowly.

It’s worth noting that management never, <i>ever</i> does this.

And it may be for good reason. The software quality of Facebook is quite low--I frequently find pages that are broken or don’t work as expected or work weirdly. But they are the most valuable social network on the planet. It’s interesting to me that in <i>some</i> areas--most notably the Facebook iPhone app--the quality improved drastically. Obviously there was customer pressure there for a better app, and so they eventually had to deliver it.

Quality is a feature, yes, but features are also features. You have to balance these things out intelligently.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-03-07 11:51:59.000

(for my comments on the first of your articles, see the previous page)

As far as the second article goes, there’s a good reason programmers go to Stack Overflow for answers rather than, say, the Microsoft MSDN documentation pages.

MSDN is, in essence, a way for programmers to talk to other programmers, only it’s filtered through a HUGE mass of bureaucracy, poorly-informed technical writers, and high-level corporate stupidity.

Stack Overflow is a way for programmers to talk to other programmers <i>directly</i>.

It’s not surprising that programmers would choose the latter.

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-03-07 12:28:18.000

Yes, disintermediation.

That's a good way to look at it - Quality as a feature. You could assign a level of quality to a release, I suppose. Facebook obviously doesn't have to have bulletproof quality.

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2013-03-20 08:40:41.000

xradionut here. (goForth on Ars...)

I've been busy. Married and have a house now. Three cats and a dog. Wife is a geek, a gamer and a Texan with guns. (Yes, dear...)
:D

Still torn between corporate MS OS/coding/databases for money and OSS for sanity. Prototype in Python and finish in C#.

Still think John Barnes is the best sci-fi writer in the last twenty years. (IMNSHO). Met Jim Butcher before the Dresden Files blew up to be big. Have signed book from David Gerrold.

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10468

Posted on: 2013-03-30 13:59:09.000

It's good to have fresh ars meat.

:)

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-04-02 18:14:02.000

Just saw this:

Startup Mastermind
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Moii Cafe Cambie
2559 Cambie St. near Broadway, Vancouver, BC
http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Vancouver/events/110811712/?a=md1_grp&rv=md1

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-04-03 19:05:30.000

Ah, I didn't go. I wimped out. :(

I guess I don't feel ready for such a thing yet, as I haven't delivered a product.

But thanks for the link and maybe next time!

Madan

Posts: 5

Posted on: 2013-04-20 12:31:00.000

I've been busy sitting back watching people make more and more of a legend of my Ars posting persona while completely rewriting everything and anything I ever wrote on that forum. Misrepresentation doesn't even begin to cover the extent of what's happening up in there.

It was gratifying to be completely right about Apple. It's funny noone ever mentions that. But then, it's hard being an Apple-hater lately, I guess.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-04-20 16:57:56.000

OMG Madan you're back!!!! :dance::dance::dance::dance:

So happy to see you! I don't even care anything about what happened in the past or who said what or did what, I'm just glad you're back.

How's life treating you? What have you been up to?

Madan

Posts: 5

Posted on: 2013-04-20 22:04:34.000

I'm good. How's about you?

I'm in love. Dating a nice girl. Work is great. Second year in a row that I receive that top national commendations for performance in my career. Playing Mass Effect 3 multi and L4D 2 vs. Finished Bioshock Infinite. Still in love with my iMac and iPad.

About 5% done with my iOS game. Pretty ambitious stuff. We'll see where that goes.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-04-21 16:50:12.000

Hey, that's great! I assume you're still teaching? Still in Miami?

I'm currently taking some time off as I was laid off late last December. I'm working on my newLISP on Rockets rapid web development framework, as well as a couple of websites built on said framework. Playing around with green screens and live streaming as well, which is fun. Also writing more articles for Ars.

Of course I'm typing this from my MacBook while my wife is sitting next to me on her iPad, and I've got my iPhone on hand as well. Kind of went Full Apple. :)

What is your iOS game about?

Madan

Posts: 5

Posted on: 2013-04-24 05:54:26.000

Something...extremely ambitious.

The story is 80% mapped out. The gameplay controls are 60% mapped out. I'm having problems getting around some of the rendering problems on the iPad 1. Not enough memory. I wanted to make it as widely available as possible but I might have to just consign myself to iPad 2+.

Madan

Posts: 5

Posted on: 2013-04-24 05:59:31.000

Anyone on here playing L4D 2 or ME 3? Starcraft 2 ?

Oh and Infinity Blade 2 is delicious. That is all.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-04-24 08:14:22.000

I'm playing Starcraft 2. Went on ladder, with hilarious and disastrous results. Might even go back. :)

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-04-24 10:12:48.000

BTW, what are you using to develop your iOS game? Is it a framework, or are you just coding from scratch in Objective C?

Madan

Posts: 5

Posted on: 2013-04-24 23:36:05.000

Scratch. I thought of using Unity...but after Apple became so...difficult with non walled-garden technologies, I figured Xcode, Lightwave, Photoshop were my best bet. ;)

Noone on here plays L4D? Shame...

Ajar

Posts: 2413

Posted on: 2013-04-25 13:57:32.000

I played a ton of L4D and L4D2 back when the came out. A decent amount of ME3 as well. I don't play any of those anymore, though, and I was playing them all on the Xbox in any case.

I've gotten back into Starcraft a bit since HotS came out, but not nearly as much as I was in the first 12-18 months of WoL.

jay

Posts: 1696

Posted on: 2013-04-26 04:51:15.000

Wow. Madan is back! Nice to see you dude!

As for me - well I decided I got tired of trying to please clients and employers so I've gone into business for myself slinging code. I can't claim to be a business mastermind as I was literally handed some really good contracts and urged to do this before I committed to doing it, so as of right now it's a pretty low risk scenario.

In terms of software development though, your quote from before regarding how nobody knows what the hell they are building is stunningly accurate. I've been writing code for 14 years professionally (web apps for nearly as long) and I don't think I've ever had a project, save mundane work like a data conversion, in which the client had a clue what they really wanted up front. Both of the clients I have now who have booked all of my time for the week are in this position. One of them wants me to turn a piece of custom software I helped develop for them over the last nine years into a commercial product. They really don't understand what that's going to take. Needless to say it's an interesting exercise and I'm committed to trying to make a go of it. The other client is the marketing group for some multi-national that deals a lot with telecoms. They have no clue what they really want up front and it can be frustrating when things change on a dime - but the work is relatively easy and benign so it all evens out in the end I guess.

As for how it's going in other areas. Blah. My wife has got some kind of sickness and nobody seems to know what it is. All fingers seem to point to some sort of autoimmune disorder though. She's already had two biopsies and has had a colonoscopy scheduled for month after next now... <sigh> So while work is going really well - things aren't going that well for my wife. Thank goodness I've still got health insurance from my last full time perm employer :)

loisrp

Posts: 25

Posted on: 2013-06-24 12:28:50.000

I saw this event, and perhaps with your startup ventures you might find it interesting:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/7020854565

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-06-24 13:22:25.000

Cool! I've ordered a ticket! Thanks, Lois!

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2013-06-25 12:14:38.000

Both my wife and I are both playing Skyrim.

That is I'm finally playing, (on the 360 and TV), since she got the gaming laptop she wanted for her birthday. I'm probably going to take a long break due to some serious programming projects outside of work. But some of the rare weird buggieness in the game has been entertaining. (Like the surface of the ground disappearing, trees in mid air and draug falling from the sky. Or formations of guards appearing to parachute into the cities at dawn... WTF?

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-06-25 13:17:34.000

I never got any of the interesting bugs in Skyrim. :( Played the game from start to finish with nary an issue.

Had a great time though.

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2013-06-26 05:21:53.000

Issues with Skyrim may be the lack of memory on the 360 compared to the PC. She hasn’t seen a lock up since switching, while I get something interesting every week. The nice thing is that she bought the DLC for Skyrim, so I can kill more vampires, raise kids and such.

But no time for gaming, I have a about 5 Python projects to get done before the end of summer. :o

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-07-17 12:23:35.000

Tell me about your Python projects!

I have way more projects than I can ever finish in one lifetime. And I kind of like it that way. :)

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2013-07-18 06:37:25.000

Well, I'm now part of the leadership for the local user group. Working on data analysis in pandas, learning iPython and may get back into some web development with Flask. Also some small learning projects and such.

Thundar

Posts: 4569

Posted on: 2013-07-21 06:22:56.000

Greetings from the user formerly known as Thundar on OSY 2.0. Wow haven’t been here in a while...

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-07-21 08:41:28.000

YAY MAXIMUS/THUNDARR!!!!

Would you like your old avatar back? I'll restore your post count forthwith!

Thundar

Posts: 4569

Posted on: 2013-07-21 10:56:00.000

That'd be sweet! And could you switch my name back to Thundar? I had a momentary lapse of memory when re-registering... :D

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2013-07-21 18:04:55.000

It is done!

Ajar

Posts: 2413

Posted on: 2013-07-22 11:25:30.000

So I joined a local R users’ group, and thought it would be fun to tackle a pet personal interest project: developing an R package for Starcraft 2 analytics.

Blizzard released the code of their s2protocol project, allowing anyone with enough skill to run a Python script to parse a replay file. The next step is figuring out how to output the contents (gameplay events, etc) in ways amenable to analysis. Plenty of others are doing basic replay analysis (e.g. SC2Gears allows you to track changes in your APM, matchup winrates, etc over time; GGTracker allows you to track your "spending skill" -- how consistently you spend your resources), but no one is using it to look at game balance. Or, if Blizzard are doing that, they aren’t telling. Their posts about game balance are always about aggregate matchup data, prevalence of a given build/unit, and observations from pro level matches.

But I want to know how much the addition of infestors to an army changes the duration of an engagement, and whether that has any effect on whether the engagement is a win or a loss (i.e. who lost the most supply/army value). Nobody seems to be looking at that stuff. Sure, siege tanks hard counter banelings, but how many banelings per tank is SO MANY BANELINGS that it doesn't matter?

The bridge between R and Python only works on *nix at the moment, so the first step is to see if I can compile the bridge package from source and get it to work. If not, I may end up doing the replay parsing in Python and then spitting out several data files that I can then read into R for analysis.

Could I learn pandas or some other Python analytics package? Sure, but I already know how to do analysis in R, so I’ll try to get that working first. Onward!

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2013-07-22 12:04:08.000

The folks I know that do R, say Pandas is like R in Python... YMMV

Ajar

Posts: 2413

Posted on: 2013-07-22 14:09:23.000

How is Python for parsing text? From a first glance at the gameplay events, they appear to emerge from s2protocol as raw text that would need to be wrangled with some regex.

Pandas appears to deliberately emulate R in several areas (data frames, *apply functions, etc), but is notably missing something as nice and elegant as the ggplot2 graphics pacakge. Still, for the number of replay files I'd like to parse, there's something to be said for execution speed...

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2013-07-25 06:40:08.000

Ajar,

Check into one of the big Python distros like Enthought or Anaconda. They include packages like IPython and Matplotlib.

Ajar

Posts: 2413

Posted on: 2013-07-26 11:46:13.000

I've got Anaconda installed on my Win7 box and have been tinkering with it. I haven't gotten it running on OS X yet, though.

SaytheNamePlaytheGame

Posts: 1

Posted on: 2014-01-23 09:00:43.000

I thought I'd ditch the whole "Madan" thing since it's completely based upon a character from a children's book series so I'll just use this User ID. It's a strangely appropriate nom de plume since I'm apparently constantly being brought up in other forums, with all kind of outrageous and fictitious allegations ascribed to those IDs. :lol:
Anyone on here game on Steam or Origin? Thought it'd be good to get outside the "partisan politics" of tech trolling to actually get to know each other on a more fundamental level. That's if you're interested of course. :)
Right now on Origin I'm gaming on Mass Effect 3 multi. NFS Rivals and Most Wanted 2k13. I've got Battlefield 3(sorry, no 4), and I have a group of people we could squad with. I also have Deadspace 3 but I haven't cooped it so if anyone wants to demolish that in a few afternoons, I'd be game.
For Battlenet, I have StarCraft and Diablo 3. Although SC 2 is really the only thing I'd be interested in. I have a few friends that powergame SC 2 but I'm a consummate noob.
On Steam, I pretty much live on L4D 2 and many of you may know but Valve gave the game away for free on Steam on Christmas day. I'd be willing to teach anyone the ins and outs of the game if they want and we have a pretty big group, spread evenly between age groups and genders. I also have Dawn of War 2, Might and Magic: Heroes 6 and Vindictus (free Source-based combat MMO).
If anyone's interested in getting some OSY games set up, simply drop your Steam/Origin handles and I'll add you and we can catch a few games.

Might be fun.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2014-01-23 09:45:35.000

I'd love to play some Starcraft. There are some people at my new job who play and I'd like to get better so that I can give them a challenge. :)

Add me at jreimeris AT shaw.ca on Battle.net.

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10468

Posted on: 2014-04-17 18:46:06.000

AYB has also been playing world of tanks


:)

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2014-11-19 11:32:31.000

Well I had been playing Starcraft II fairly regularly for a while, and even got up to Gold League in 1v1. But now Warlords of Draenor is out and I've been playing that instead.

jay

Posts: 1696

Posted on: 2015-01-30 04:11:21.000

I just realized that OSY has Cheevos now. Whoa. I love Cheevos. I am a Cheevo junkie. Just check out my Steam Profile:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/jaylittle

I DEMAND KNOWLEDGE ON HOW I CAN ACQUIRE MORE CHEEVOS.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2015-02-08 09:53:20.000

New OSY Achievements are limited only by your imagination!

Right now I think there are only the following:

- OSY 1.0 member
- OSY 2.0 member
- OSY 3.0 founder
- OSY Creator (that's just me)
- First Admiral

But I'd be happy to add more!

addseo1115

Posts: 3

Posted on: 2015-06-08 22:06:22.000

i'm glad to be here.

addseo1115

Posts: 3

Posted on: 2015-06-11 00:24:58.000

Who is there ???

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2015-06-11 13:47:51.000

Well, I'm still here. It's my website, after all. :)

But not too many other people visit these days. Too many other interesting shiny things to visit on the Internet, I guess.

Still, OSY will live on!

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10468

Posted on: 2015-08-17 09:41:03.000

SMAM!!!

:sailormoon:

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2015-08-18 12:01:23.000

Yay!!! AYB is back!

:dance:

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10468

Posted on: 2015-08-19 08:33:39.000

Whee!!!

xradionut

Posts: 19

Posted on: 2015-08-28 10:24:02.000

I’m back.

Still in Tejas, surviving the summer. Got back into ham radio, but that’s slowed down for classes. (Learn to manage database servers...)

Still the geek with one foot in the MS world and one foot in the OSS world. Get hated by all sides. :dance:

Hugo Awards got Imploded!

Don't know whether to laugh or cry. I know authors across the spectrum of opinions and my feeling are mixed. The awards had become inbred and clichey, but blowing them up will either kill them or mutate them into something...

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9344

Posted on: 2015-09-07 16:16:59.000

Interesting that you should mention the Hugo awards... next week's Knotty Geeks podcast will cover them in detail!