Irene drive in Somerset West

When I first arrived in the Western Cape this view made me understand what makes it special to stay here. You can see the whole peninsula, and on a clear day (like yesterday) the view takes my breath away. I'll post my first panoramic image now as well, don't know how well it will turn out... as it's a feature of the phone, and let's look at the result.

A quick review of Firefox 3.0

Well... I think it's... very much like the old one.

The look and feel has been changed a little, but not enough to make me feel uncomfortable with it, and also not enough to say it's a huge improvement. So

Look and feel : Still very good, +1 on the old one.

Size of download : Chunkier, so -2 on that. I liked the fact that firefox 2 was still small and lightweight. Firefox 3 is almost 8mb.

Ease of installation : Very easy... Just as any normal windows application. +0 (the old firefox was just as easy)

Ease of porting from old Firefox : Very easy... +2 (technically porting from the old Firefox is so easy you don't have to do it... but it gets +2 brownie points for getting all my addons for Firefox 3 (those that weren't compatible already)

So quick review...
+3 vs Firefox 2.
+8 (it should be a horizontal 8) vs IE.

Pre-arranged funeral

In KZN I found this window... What is a pre-arranged funeral? It sounds just a little bit below board...

Proclaim Allah?

Radio Tygerberg has never been a station I listen at all so forgive me any misinterpretations I might have here. It's their democratic right as much as it is mine to do whatever they think is good. I just have a feeling that christians will be much less tolerant of a booth in public mall stating "We proclaim Allah".

Vodacom poster

However much I enjoy wit and humor in advertisements, this one was maybe just a bit too graphic for me. I have to admit that it grabbed my attention when I saw it, as it speaks to how I believe many view their phones. However I've always been really uncomfortable with the idea of having any thing foreign in my body.

Music Evening

This is a "Potbrood" (pot bread) that we baked that day, and then I snatched this photo of the cat camping on the guitar case. Reminds me of the musicians of Bremen (? -- Help me if I have the place wrong).

Sunset II

I drove a while to get this shot. It was taken on the Tierberg, and i got the light to play some tricks which was awesome. If I were rich then I'd like a spot up there, or maybe Plattekloof.

Sunrise II

The thing about sunrises in Cape Town, is that the mountains are in the way. So in a way the sun's angle on the earth is often not so perfect for nice sunrises, but we often have spectacular sunsets... However table mountain gets in the way in high summer periods.

Sunrise I

What I like about winter is the fact that I can sometimes rise early enough to appreciate a sunrise. As Pep I can get onto the roof and have a pretty decent view of the sunrises.

Moths...

I finally got my phone's photo blogging feature to work, so i'm now posting all my pics i want to now.
These moths were just a little smaller than my hand... Unfortunately i don't have one where their (there were several) wings were opened more.

Cape town CBD tree hugger

This to me was just so cool. The tree was obviously put there a while back, and my best guess is because of prodominant wind forces it grew less straight than the original planters had hoped. What really caused me to take the picture, was the way the tree engulfs the barrier.

Test

Test

Black holes

http://www.thinktechnologies.com/portfolio/demos/Blackhole.html

I found this using StumbleUpon! and I thought it was awesome. I now understand much more, and it's a really cool flash (I think) learning experience.

By the way. I've now created a DaringApprentice blog, so I'll not be posting any more Daring Apprentice news here.

Testing the email blogging feature

<<Screenshot1.jpg>>

I am testing how the picture email blogging works, and just using a DA screenshot to do it.  (Old one at that!)

No action on svn...

Yes... I've not posted another release recently. And here's why:

• I've been seriously busy with work lately, but I think it will slow down in the next couple of weeks, so I'll get some extra time on it.
• I've been assessing how to improve my model of the network communication, to be sending "objects" instead of a stringstream through.
• I'm chatting to Almindor (#lnet@irc.freenode.org) who will hopefully help me get that on track.

So I'll be posting my progress here, and letting you know on how things are shaping up.

Daring Apprentice revision 76

Revision 76:
M : Changed the way "messages" were handled.
M : New tokens are immediately available on the dropdown after creation.
M : Changed Type2 decks to be really type 2.
UM : The deck/SB/RFG/Graveyard has moved
UF : You can now save the last camera coordinates and zoom
M : Some table creation on the server has been written

I guess the most important changes here are the fact that I now have actual Type 2 decks with it. :-)

I also moved the position of the deck/sb/ etc. to free up more space on the table, which I guess is significant.

Yeah... on the serverside... I am realising now why I've been setting it away... it's hard. :-)

I am creating the structures on the serverside at the moment, so nothing "visible" is happening (well with network stuff are never really visible), but I am working on the networking, and I have a second PC to my disposal which will hopefully make testing easier...

So hopefully within the next couple of releases you'll be able to upload your deck to the server... then hopefully in the next following those, we'll get the you to draw cards, and play them and so on... :-)

Then we'll implement it feature by feature...

Abe Sargent of the Kitchen table references Daring Apprentice

It is at best, just a quick reference, but it is an excellent prospect... although there isn't any actual links to any of the software mentioned. So I'll ask him to insert it, but I don't know if he can/will.

I should eat that frog and start getting multiplayer working. :-)

Programming DA...

I want to possibly change this blog a bit, towards something like the guy who does MTG Forge's blog.

I'll talk here about things I struggle to overcome, and how I did (or did not) overcome them.

Today, I'll discuss my "TfrmStringlist". This is my window that displays the graveyard/RFG/SB/Deck/"Top X cards" of the deck.

At the moment though... it displays only one of the above mentioned and that includes both players.

Only one window... that's the rule.

This can eventually become a problem though... as you may want to view your own, and your opponents graveyard to make a choice (etc.).

One solution I can think of at the moment is to have 1 of these per player (this will alleviate the above mentioned problem) but then you still can't view your graveyard and deck at the same time.

The next is to have 1 for each zone per player... this will be very memory intensive though, and I want to keep Daring Apprentice very "lightweight". :-/

Anyway, I'll let you know what I decided.

Daring Apprentice revision 75

Lots of work, especially on the deck editor has gone in, but also important is that you can now play dredge decks a lot easier.

One of my objectives are to at least include 1 client/server item per release, so I get it done. It's my frog.

Please comment on the bolded change... I have no idea if there is ways in magic to send cards to the "non-owners" hand/deck/SB etc. (How does Booby trap work?)

If anyone reading this has got a del.icio.us or a digg account, please go ahead. :-)

Revision 75:
Fix : (Deckeditor) Deleting a card should not give an error.
Fix : (Deckeditor) After loading a deck, the cardtotals will now refresh.
UF : (Deckeditor) TAB doesn't stop in the card's oracle anymore.
Fix : (Main) Discarding the whole hand doesn't crash the game anymore.
M : (Server) Implemented a rudamentary Player and table type.
UF : Hand and token windows will now display the current player's name in the caption
M : Cards that are moved to zones, are now moved to their OWNER's zones, and not their Controller's.
This implies you cannot send something he doesn't own to his hand/grave/rfg/top of deck etc.
(PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THIS SHOULD BE SO?!)
Fix : Zones now update even if they are open while you send cards there.

Daring Apprentice revision 70

Revision 70:
UA : Alt-S in the deckeditor now adds a card to the sideboard
UA : (Option) You can set the max length (in chars) of the card name (before going adding "...") (Default = 15) (0 = Show everything)
U : Cards are now created not so close to each other.
U : Tokens are created next to each other just as normal cards.
U : You can now create your own token types... (you'll have to edit the Options.ini file).
MB : Tried to fix some memory leaks...
BUG : Icons are loaded until one breaks it... currently on my machine I get none... :-( (I think this came in 69 already)
UA : If you shift-click on the "Set Life" button (on the toolbar) you'll get "Adjust life by:" instead of "Set life to:".
M : Changed the shuffling a bit. (Technically, just shuffling a bit more "systematic")