Today, I was having an argument with my brother about multidimensional arrays and coordinate systems. The specifics are a bit complex to go over here, but at its core, he wasn't mentally picture the structure of an array correctly and so was reading his array's wrong causing them to display as if they were rotated 90 degrees.

I don't really remember having any issues when dealing with arrays, though these days, I generally stick to single dimensional arrays and use math if I need to convert from, say, a screen coordinate to its corresponding spot in the data structure. Particularly, and in the case of our argument, we were talking about reading in a map file. That got me thinking about this trinket I wrote several years ago.

Download Source

If I recall, this test was more about scripted AI and platform physics, but there was a loadable map aspect as well. Maps are something I've played around with for a very long time, one of my first programming mental puzzles being how to generate one that wasn't gibberish programatically. This was something that baffled me for the longest time, but I eventually did figure something out and even wrote a tutorial about it.

But, really, this whole little tale and code offering are because I had no idea what to talk about otherwise. I suspect I shall have less issues tomorrow (for reasons that will become clear), but that hardly helps me in the here and now.

Happy 4th!

Here we are at day three and already I'm forced to talk about the death of things dear to me. No, not Andy Griffith (though, I did see my fair share of him when my dad went through his Matlock phase in the early 90s).

For over half a decade, iGoogle has been the sight that has greeted me as I started my browser and many times when I clicked the "home" button of my browser (a button I've had to explicitly enable in Chrome). But soon, this will be no more.

Now, I'd had a hunch that iGoogle was getting less than stellar treatment lately as it became very difficult to make iGoogle my default page for google.com and also when its design was broken through their extensive redesigning. Perhaps the personal web portal is passe at this point, but I will surely miss it. iGoogle has provided me with an at-a-glance preview of my mail and a handful of other website snippets since its inception in 2005.

To be fair, I've been using less and less of the gadgets (or whatever they call them), slowly being culled down from my email and RSS feeds from various websites and webcomics to just mail, a deviantArt gadget that I don't pay attention to anymore, and the RSS feed from my brother's comic. Outside of the casual overview of my email, I don't really take advantage of functionality of iGoogle anymore as I've moved away to better, dedicated applications and sites such as Google Reader and the ever present reddit.

But, I'm a programmer, dammit! I can build myself a site that not only provides the same functionality I used before, but make it better, faster, stronger, and more tailored to my needs! I have sixteen months to replace the death row inmate that is iGoogle and replace it I shall.

I shall...

Some time ago, I came to the realization that I could (for free) check out movies from the local library. As convenience would have it, the library is about half a mile from my place of work, so it provides an excellent reason to get in some exercise during my lunch break.

Last week - on one of these very journeys - I was perusing the blu-ray section and ran across a couple of films. One I'd seen, the other not: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner respectively. Now, I shouldn't have to remind you of my feelings for 2001, but I thought perhaps my six years of maturation since having watched it initially may have changed things. Blade Runner I picked up partially based on glowing reviews from a coworker, partially because I felt I was going to need some badass 80s action movie to pick me up after rewatching 2001.

Well, I fucked that one up.

2001 was watched first and, for the most part, my feelings towards the movie are mostly the same; it's slow, it doesn't make much sense, but the special effects are quite incredible for the time. About half way through the movie, I threw up my arms in defeat and got wasted. Inebriation didn't help much my enjoyment of the movie nor did it provide any epiphanies (I suspect that only getting stoned is going to help you there). But, that was okay. I knew going in about what to expect and I still had some Harrison Ford awesomeness to look forward to.

Only I didn't.

Because, in many ways, 2001 and Blade Runner are very similar movies: they're both slow, they both don't make much sense, and they both have very good effects for their time. I went into Blade Runner expecting an action flick starring one of the best action stars of all time - something akin to Die Hard - but, instead I got a noir film set in a dystopian future that focuses on android's rights. Not what I was expecting at all.

I won't lie - and keeping in mind what I was expecting - I did not very much enjoy Blade Runner. Firstly, I'm not entirely partial to dark films (both figuratively and literally in this case) and I'll give 2001 props for at least being a hopeful movie. Secondly, the soundtrack for Blade Runner is so 80s psychedelic that it almost made me feel like I was tripping balls despite the fact that I was entirely sober for that film. 2001, on the other hand, uses nothing but classical music for its score, so point again. Finally, Blade Runner's basic premise of "what are the rights of a manufactured life form" has been done time and again. Also, while I did say it didn't make much sense, Blade Runner was at least a bit easier to piece together than 2001.

As much as it pains me to say this, I have to say that I enjoyed 2001 much more than Blade Runner. I don't necessarily hate Blade Runner, but it's just not a movie suited to my tastes.

In the sixth month of the prior year, I endeavored to blog once per day for the entire month. Seeing how this blog is currently collecting figurative dust, I feel like I should try this again. Some days shall be easier than others as the anime convention happens this month. Additionally, I shall be taking a trip to Dallas with my dad and brothers to partake in the excitingness that is Six Flags over Texas. I quite enjoy the thrill of rollar coasters, I do.

Now, I'm a bit drunk at the moment and the room is quite spinning, so this blog shall have to remain as it is, but expect there to be something on the face of this blog every day for the month of July. I will leave off with the first thing that came up for a google image search of "drunk".