Matt Hackmann

MattHackmann

The thoughts and goings-on of some programmer dad.

Fun with faces!

Found a website that is currently beta testing some facial recognition software. You can upload your face and have it match it against a database full of celebreties. Well, I dumped a picture of me and and apprently I look like Tim Berners-Lee :-D (actually there is a striking resemblene). Now isn't that cool :-). See ya and have fun.

Tetra updates!

I was kind of feeling the lack of Tetra's blog features today so I went in and started piddling around with stuff. As you can see the archives list is now sorted in descending order and I also have a little links bar (I can add as many side bars as I want too :-)). Also, fixed a few problems in the message board code and cleaned up a couple other things that had been bothering me for months.

I got my USBC card today which brings to to the following important note: tomorrow is bowling again. YAY! After that I'll be working three days and then get Saturday off. YAY! Then I'll work Sunday and I'll be off again. YAY! (I 'spect that's getting annoyiing :-P).

Well, that's about all I wanted to say. But before I go I'll give a shout out to my coworker buddy, Blake! :-D See ya :-)

It's official... I check people out for a living

And checking out hot babes is fun ;-). No, really. Yesterday my job code was officially changed to cashier so now, uhh.... it's official :-P. Today was my first 8 hour day doing cashier and what what a day it was. Standing in one spot and constantly leaning over to reach people's stuff takes a nasty toll on your back. And when you've been waiting 40 minutes for the managers to send you home it's even worse :-P. But, overall, I quite enjoy the job (a lot of button pushing ;-)). Tomorrow I work six hours and then, hallelujah, I'm off Monday and Tuesday :-D.

My 3D game programming book came the other and it's really a good book. It's actually written by one of the guys on the DirectX dev team so you know it's at least accurate :-P. But really, if you're starting out 3d game programming look into this book.

Lastly, last night I ordered up a (legit) copy of Yoshi's Island GBA so that should be coming some time next week. I look forward to playing that on my lunch breaks :-).

Yes, it seems my life nhas boiled down to two things: work and programming. But, heck, at least I'm malking money (getting a few hundred dollar paycheck every two weeks rocks ;-)). Until next time, keep those prices rollin'!

So it's 2006... I smell no difference

Ah, the new year has arrived and with it a job change for me. That's right I achieved my life long dream and got a part time job at the Sizzler! No, really. I am now a cashier at Wal-mart. I originally wanted to be a cart pusher because cashier was something I wanted to be even less. There was a bit of confusion for a while because I told Debbie (schedule lady) I didn't really like cashiering and I'd rather be a cart pusher. My guess is she misunderstood, got it reversed and set things in motion for me to become a cashier (they even changed my job code to cart pusher so they could change it to cashier which had me even more confused). But tonight was my first night working the register (being watched, of course) and it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I have tomorrow and Tuesday off so that makes things even sweeter.

Speaking of Tuesday there's bowling again (thank heavens)! Now that I have a job I appreciate the bowling night even more than I did before. Tomorrow Mom and I are going to go to Tulsa and do some shopping. I've got $50+ dollars of spending money ($300 if I borrowed from savings, but that's college money now). I'm thinking of buying Yoshi's Island or Mairo World (if I can find it :-P). I've even tossed the idea of getting a DS and Mario Kart DS around, but my laptop is cool enough for me at the moment ;-).

But, now that I've rambled on long enough, I bid you all a happy new year. 2005 was quite an eventful year for me and 2006 will probably bring some interesting things. Stay here for the latest :-)

So sweet, yet so short

Before I delve into this stuff I just want to say I hope you all had a good Christmas :-).

Well, Christmas paper shredding has come and gone once again. All that excitement and anticipation over with the course of a couple hours. Ah, but a pretty sweet Christmas it was. So, I bet the question on the tip of your tounges is "What'dya get?". Here's the run down: glass chess set (frosted even :-D), laptop backpack, CF card reader/writer, a "Pedro's Got your Back" and a nice flannel shirt, some money and a gift card, a Dave Berry book, and the piece de resitance: my own cell phone :-D. Quite a cool one at that. Basic, but it suits my needs. Actually, truth be told, it does some stuff that my parents fancier phone doesn't do, namely the ability to use SMS web services (such as google). Quite sweet, quite sweet.

The last few days I've been delving into GBA dev again and something seems to have finally clicked. I understand how loading sprites works and all that malarkey and so I've begun my GBA Tetris Attack clone. And actually it's coming along quite nicely. Debugging is a pain in the but since I don't have a debug console or files to write ciritcal values to, but I'm chugging along all the same.

Tomorrow, if I haven't mentioned already, I go to discuss my future at Wal-Mart (Christmas Eve marked my last day in layaway). I'm not sure where I'll end up exactly, but at this point in time cart pusher seems most likely. Now I know I was complaining earlier, but I've done it a couple of times since and I'll tell you that being able to use the QuickCart makes it a heckuva lot easier. My other option is cashier, but dislike that even more (though if it was back in electronics I might reconsider). I personally wouldn't mind working in claims or as an overnight stocker (both of which I have done). Whenever there was nothing to do in layaway after closing I'd usually get sent to toys to help them stock and I must say it was a lot of fun (I did chemicals one night and I liked that too). So we'll just see tomorrow (and I'll post something about it).

Ah, but now it is getting late and I've got presents to play with (maybe I'll go blow Jeff away in a game of chess). Stay tuned for an interesting video clip from yesterday morning. It's absolutely hilarious. Cheers!