The Quern

It's All Grist for the Personal Mill

Archive for October, 2009

Happy Birthday!

Oct 30

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

3974988326_fde18dc5b3[1]Katherine turned six yesterday!  Although we’re having our party later in November, we had cake and a song yesterday, and she got one present to open.  Unfortunately, either the excitement or the caffeine and sugar in the large amount of chocolate cake she ate prompted her to wake up at 11:30 last night and not go back to sleep until 3:45.

So my birthday present to her was to be calm and understanding as I slowly slipped back into the state of exhaustion that’s so familiar these days.  I would feel worse if I thought this was a pattern, but I do think it was just the excitement of the day.  She’d had three good nights in a row before this and it was obvious she wanted to sleep, just couldn’t for some reason.  We’ll reset again tonight and give it another try, this time without the chocolate cake 30 minutes before bedtime.

We did get some good pictures, with which I’ll update this post later this afternoon.

Tags: , ,

Erfworld Relaunch

Oct 28

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Humor, Reviews, Websites | No Comments

BLOWUP_nomnomnom_640[1]I follow a few webcomics.  They make great bite-size reads when I’m waiting for a compile at work, or while eating an in-cube breakfast.  One of my favorites is one called Erfworld, created by Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi.  Erfworld follows the adventures of a gaming nerd who is summoned to a fantasy world as the “perfect warlord” that a hard-pressed, losing faction desperately needs.  The fantasy world follows all the conventions of a turn-based wargame, including movement points, levels, attack bonuses, and so forth, and Parson Gotti (the protagonist) has to learn all the details as he goes.  Unfortunately for him, his boss is both crazy and dim, his forces are vastly outnumbered, and no one trusts him.

The writing and art were both excellent, and as a gamer myself I was constantly laughing at the dense layer of in-jokes and game references almost every update.  Unfortunately, after completing the first installment of the comic, artist Jamie Noguchi got overcommitted and eventually decided to step down from illustrating Erfworld.  Rob Balder kept up with text-only updates, but they were sort of just marking time.

It looked like Erfworld was heading for a slow suffocation, but recently Rob announced that they will be relaunching today, October 28, with a new artist.  They’ve already revealed some of her art and it’s excellent!  I can’t wait to start the new installment of the comic; it looks like Rob is pushing the writing to deal more with the social ramifications of living in a world patterned after a fantasy-themed board wargame, which are pretty bizarre.  In turn, the concepts of free will and human rights Parson is importing seem just as alien to the Erfworlders.  Add in a major war to test Parson’s strategic chops, and this second book looks like it could be pretty awesome!

Tags: ,

Sleep, or the Lack Thereof

Oct 26

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

sleep-main_Full[1]I’m not sure things have ever been worse on the sleep front for the Wigdahl kids.  Jonathan’s fussiness has ramped up; we had been very hopeful that he was going to be completely easy, but he’s turning out to be more like Thomas than Katherine on that front.  We’re still hoping that he’s just feeling under the weather or reacting badly to something Robin ate, or to the formula that we’ve supplemented him with.  We’re going to try soy formula for that and see if that improves things at all.

That leaves the two other kids.  After months of great sleep, Katherine is back in a rut of getting up in the middle of the night nearly every night.  Sometimes she goes back to sleep easily, and sometimes she stays up.  With her it seems more like a matter of habit — once she’s off track she stays off track until we manage to get her retrained, so we’re having to jump on that.

And Thomas, who’s always been the best sleeper, has been getting up way too early lately for varied and poorly-specified reasons, which makes him crankier.

All in all, it sucks.  I’ve been taking care of Katherine’s wakings while Robin deals with Jonathan, so neither of us are even close to getting a good night’s sleep.  I have high hopes that we’ll get things figured out and back on track, but for now there are a lot of yawns at Casa de Wigdahl.

Tags: , , ,

Champions Offline

Oct 23

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Computer, Games | No Comments

champions_online_profilelarge[1]If you’d have asked me in mid-August, when the beta for Champions Online was only days away, whether I’d play it or not, I’d have said “of course!”  The beta was fun, but took a bit of the wind out of my sails.  What really killed it, and spiked any real desire to pick up any MMO again, however, was discovering the joys of writing interactive fiction.  It’s pretty hard to force myself to play an MMO after working on (or playing) an interactive story.

After release CO seemed like a pretty solid, if unambitious game, but I just think the entire MMO format works against the immersion into the superhero genre, in a way it doesn’t in a fantasy or SF setting.  The level-grinding mechanic itself is questionable from the get-go, not to mention the fact that you need to take on higher-conning mobs to level maximally quickly.  If you’re getting killed by thugs of whatever level, you’re not going to feel very super.

Then there’s the MMO quest structure, where you’re either:

  1. Killing 10 rats
  2. Acting like a FedEx delivery truck, or
  3. Gathering fromitz boards

If you really want to play a game that makes you feel like a superhero, try Batman: Arkham Asylum.  I doubt I’m even a third of the way through the game so far, but the array of gadgets, gameplay modes, cutscenes and content are very impressive.  And since it’s a single-player game, your character can be powerful without fears of balance issues.  I’m very impressed — this is definitely one of the games that makes it over the new, higher post-IF bar.  I’ll have a full review when I’m done.

Tags: ,

Goooooaaaaalllll!!! (Redux)

Oct 21

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

soccer_22cOnce again Thomas has something to be proud of in soccer!  The previous weekend he scored his first-ever goal in a game, but it was a scrimmage game due to the other team having too few players; he was one of ours that played for the other team to at least not waste the trip to the field.

This week, he scored his first goal in a legitimate game!  I wish I’d had the video camera; it was picture-perfect.  A teammate had moved the ball down to scoring position, took a shot, and had it deflected.  Thomas saw the opportunity, ran in fast, kicked hard, and the ball flew up and into the goal, just wide of the goalie.

It’s hard to describe how excited we were.  I was jumping around yelling, he was pumping his fists, and he spent the rest of the game playing his hardest, getting in some good defensive plays and running fast.  I was so proud!

A taste of success in soccer is going a long way for Thomas.  Since he’s finally getting some involvement in successful plays, he’s getting some more passes and putting more effort into his play, which is paying off with yet more success.  It’s a positive vicious circle — would that make it a virtuous circle?  Maybe I’ll just fall back on my engineering degree and call it positive feedback.

Tags: ,

Jonathan Update

Oct 19

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | 1 Comment

Handsome boysBy popular request, here are some more pics of Jonathan!  He’s now over 8 and one half pounds and does a pretty good job of sleeping at night.  We’re still a bit behind on sleep overall, but getting to a point we can live with.

Unfortunately, several of us have been sick this last week — only Jonathan and I have dodged it so far, and I’m not 100% sure about me.  Thomas and Katherine seem to be doing better, so with luck Robin will improve soon as well.

More updates later!

Tags:

Katherine and Jonathan

Oct 16

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | 2 Comments

fp_66Initially Katherine didn’t really show much interest in Jonathan, as I think I said previously.  She cared if he had both gloves on (one was not acceptable) but otherwise, was content to ignore him.

I think over the past weeks, though, she’s gotten the idea that Jonathan is here to stay.  Robin has done a good job with referring to Thomas as “brother” and Jonathan as “brother” as well, and she’s now seeming to realize that Jonathan has some special status in the family.  The other day, she pulled up his blanket for him and gave him the pacifier when he was upset, so she’s obviously watching what’s going on and understands that we’re taking care of him.

Everyone seems to be adapting pretty well to the new family configuration.  We’re getting a bit less sleep than usual, of course, but it’s not overwhelming, we’re getting things done, and generally moving forward with life!  Jonathan is now 8 lb 5 oz, and is about the best baby ever in terms of being easygoing.  When he’s in his “happy alert” periods he’s both very happy and very alert, wanting to scrutinize faces and see whoever is talking (we’re monitoring this closely, as you can imagine).  His eyes are starting to lighten up as well so you can see the blue irises.  Fun stuff!

Posting Schedule Change

Oct 14

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Computer, Family, Writing and Philosophy | No Comments

clock_screen01[1]With Jonathan’s arrival and the attendant extra work (and reduced sleep) I think I’m going to once again change the posting schedule of this blog, so as not to have to generate filler posts just to say I posted something.

I’ll be posting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from here on out.  That should be a more feasible schedule and I should be able to come up with more substantial posts.

Tags:

IF Development Tools

Oct 13

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Computer, Interactive Fiction, Writing and Philosophy | No Comments

Christopher2[1]

Chris Doesn't Use Source Code Control...

Although Rule 5 is still in effect, so I can’t discuss my IFComp-submitted work, I’m still working on IF.  I’ve started two new projects which will share a bit of infrastructural code.

This time around, I’m improving my processes.  As a professional software developer, I wouldn’t dream of doing a project at work that didn’t use a source code control system.  In my previous IF work at home, however, I didn’t bother to set one up in the beginning.  While I was just dinking around, it wasn’t a problem.  However, once I got serious about a project, the closer I got to completion the more nerve-wracking it was making changes, for fear I’d blast something and have to laboriously reconstruct it.

Source code control protects you from this single-point-of-failure problem.  With an SCC tool, you check out and check in versions of the source code, so losing your current copy only loses you the changes since your last checkin.  In addition, a centralized SCC gives you a repository, so there are multiple copies of your file in the event of a catastrophic disk failure (of course, you should have a backup strategy as well; that’s orthogonal to the SCC issue).

I resolved that I wasn’t going to walk the tightrope without a net again.  The question then became which SCC system to get.  There are several good choices:  Subversion; Mercurial; Git; and Perforce, to name the top contenders.

I didn’t want to spend any money, but I’m not particularly ideologically wedded to an open source project.  I also use Windows, which affects the types of UIs available for OSS systems like Git, where the primary focus is on Unix-based systems.  What cinched it for me in the end was that Perforce, the system we use at work, apparently offers a free, non-expiring download of a 2-person maximum server, which is full-featured and supports all of their client apps.

I downloaded it and fired it up, and it was perhaps the easiest setup and configuration of a software package I’ve had to date.  No more than 5 minutes and the server was up and running, configured as a service.  3 more minutes and I had P4V running on my development machine and was importing my files.

Everyone has their own taste in SCC, but if you haven’t tried one yet, and if you’re working in a Windows environment, you could do far worse than to use Perforce.

Tags: , , ,

Gooooooooal!!!

Oct 12

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

soccer_22cThomas scored his first goal in an actual soccer game on Saturday!  In an interesting twist, he scored it against his own team, but that was a good thing.  Illness has hit several of the schools in our area, and the opposing team only had four kids show up, and they needed a minimum of 6.  We had 10, so some of our kids went over to the other side to play just so the game time wouldn’t be wasted.

Thomas got to play goalie for a while and blocked a few shots, and let two go through.  After that he played defender for quite a while and successfully disrupted some “opponent” attacks.  Finally, at the end of the game he was put in at forward, and that was when he got his goal.

Since neither side was running with many subs, Thomas was quite a bit fresher than the other kids on the field.  He was able to dribble past his defender and take a shot on goal, which bounced off the goal support.  He tried again and it went wide.  After that he got the ball again and took two more shots, one of which the goalie deflected and the other one which went between the goalie’s legs.

Thomas was very thrilled to finally have scored in a game, and it’s motivated him to up his practice and his aggressiveness on the field, which is awesome.  If we can build on that, he should continue to get better and score more goals in the future!

Tags: ,

The Quern is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache