My favorite pedantic moment of 2009....

Ishy's Aunt: Ishy, nice shirt. Do you like Texas?

Ishpeck: General Gadsden was from South Carolina.

Ishy's Aunt: ...

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/24/eveningnews/main4751431.shtml http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-bullets1009feb10,0,2201778.story http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/16/obama-driving-surge-gun-sales-firearms-groups-say/ http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-02-03-voa31-68765982.html?CFTOKEN=88529062&jsessionid=de302deff31cb0a2380e115065233125d7b6&CFID=325020958. . . [more]. . .

A lot of folks, when explaining/describing an FPS, will try to do so by comparing it to another FPS. You might say "it's like Wolfenstein meets Unreal Tournament" or something like that. While those games have very similar mechanics, a lot of games are more about context, flow, and narrative rather than mechanics so doing so would be an injustice to both the games being compared. With that . . . [more]. . .

Lemme tell you. This last couple days has been sheer madness. Being something of a new-found .NET kool-aid drinker, I've started to get my hands dirty in a lot of the newfangled MSFT junk. I'm actually enjoying it. Few years ago, I inherited some C# code that talked to a SOAP API interface. Being mostly allergic to trying new things, I wrote a Python wrapper for it and, because I was . . . [more]. . .

Okay, I saw a video the No Russian mission of Modern Warfare 2. Be warned: If you're a story-oriented gamer (unlike me), you may be annoyed that there are spoilers in this little post. Stop reading now if you care about that. Let the spoilers commence The mission begins with a briefing from "your" (the player's) superior, speaking in the cliche, "I AM TEH SOLJUR!" scratchy, old, wa. . . [more]. . .

Just finished watching an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's episode from Season 3 titled "A Matter of Perspective." In it Riker is accused of murdering a Tanugan scientist while on an away mission. Go watch it now if you haven't already. Otherwise this won't make sense. If you're a freak who hasn't watched TNG and yet somehow care about the fact that ther. . . [more]. . .

My late friend and hero, Byeard Maggott, was a fan of the Unity engine. It's a pity he didn't live to see this! Quoth Gamasutra: The Unity engine is becoming even more affordable to independent and hobbyist developers, as Unity Technologies has retired the $200 "Unity Indie" offering and replaced it with a free license, simply called Unity. Developer Unity Technologies is keeping the ful. . . [more]. . .

Transcript of a conversation I've been having on Cluttered Twitter. I'm really glad I copied it down 'cause Facebook started eating posts right 'n' left just after the conversation got compelling. FOR POSTERITY: Ishpeck: I don't like Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality bills are market controls imposed by the government. It's an effort to legislatively force an ISP to tr. . . [more]. . .

About half of the people who read this web site are not programmers. They've always been as welcome as everyone else but sometimes, they feel left-out 'cause I post code from time to time. Sometimes, they feel threatened or annoyed when I try to explain what's happening but I never intend for that to be the case. This is NOT a programming post. I promise. Parsing XML in .NET 2.0 i. . . [more]. . .

Have I not advocated this very thing infinitillion times before? Probably even on this very web site! Widely distributed educational material made easy by the internet. THE INTERNET IS THE NEW UNIVERSITY! Complete with asinine beerpong videos and juvenile approaches to sexuality! http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman. . . [more]. . .