"Gust Front" (John Ringo) - The second Posleen book. I often imagine how movies might be made of books I am reading. I think this one has real potential to be something memorable (of course, it could be done as another forgettable version of "Independence Day").
There is a lot character and "big ideas" (sacrifice, etc).
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Friday, December 02, 2011
A Hymn Before Battle
"A Hymn Before Battle" (John Ringo) - This is the first "Posleen" book. The Posleen are a race of centaurs who have high tech weapons and are invading the Federation. All the Federation races are pacifists, so they come to Earth to recruit an army.
There is obviously a lot more going on (I know it won't be resolved, because I have read "Eye of the Storm" which takes place after all these). Some hints have already been dropped.
It is very much the best of Ringo (I don't see how he keeps it straight in his head against the "Looking Glass" series). Fun space opera combined with good mil-SF.
There is obviously a lot more going on (I know it won't be resolved, because I have read "Eye of the Storm" which takes place after all these). Some hints have already been dropped.
It is very much the best of Ringo (I don't see how he keeps it straight in his head against the "Looking Glass" series). Fun space opera combined with good mil-SF.
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Caught in the Crossfire
"Caught in the Crossfire" (David Drake) - This is a collection of Hammer's Slammers stories (two longer pieces, two short stories, and one intermediate).
Pretty typical Slammers and Drake, although two of them showed a very ruthless side of the Slammers that you don't normally see.
Pretty typical Slammers and Drake, although two of them showed a very ruthless side of the Slammers that you don't normally see.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Memory In
Been a while since the last update!
I put the keymap in earlier, but didn't pull a screen shot (wasn't a whole lot to see, characters instead of scan codes).
This last changeset has been more "fun". Trying to update the page tables to reflect all the available memory (lots of alignment to 2M boundaries).
I've also started running under Virtual Box. Performance is a lot better, and it will be a lot easier to enable the network (plus, I might get some graphics capability). This turned up a small bug in the parsing of the ACPI tables.
I should have a steady stream of updates for a while. Trying to get a simple shell going...
Monday, November 07, 2011
Time to Play
(continuing my review of Facebook games)
It's ironic that the two best games, Robot Builder and Nitrous Racing have both come to (bitter) ends. While the terrible games continue unslowed.
As I've looked for a game to replace NR, I uncovered a new failure mode for FB games: limited time to play.
The amount of time it takes to play a game is a continuum. You have minesweeper or solitaire which take just a few minutes, to RPG's which take tens of hours. The nice thing about a short game, you can string the games together to play for an hour or two.
Unless they are Facebook games.
I'll mention two by name, but I'm sure they are not unique in this regard (indeed you see it in the Frontierville model, where you only have so much energy, and then you have nothing to do).
Diamond Dash
This is a typical matching game like Dr. Mario or Bejeweled. Game play is typical, and it tracks level (a sort of function of number of games played). But it only lets you play 1 game every 8 minutes (games are fixed at 1 minute). And you can only accumulate ~5 games. So, you play for 5 minutes, then you have to go away for an hour.
Triple Town
This actually has some promise. It is a twist on the typical matching game, in that matches are "upgraded" instead of removed (I feel like I have played this style before, but I cannot place it). Successful play is rewarded with coins, which can assist in future games.
Except, you only get one move per minute, and can only bank 75 moves. So again, you play for a few minutes, then you're forced to move on.
What is the reasoning behind this? I cannot imagine. It cannot be server load, because these are Flash games which run locally. Worse, leaving and returning forces a re-download of the app, which must spike their bandwidth usage (although Triple Town seems a lot smarter about caching).
It's ironic that the two best games, Robot Builder and Nitrous Racing have both come to (bitter) ends. While the terrible games continue unslowed.
As I've looked for a game to replace NR, I uncovered a new failure mode for FB games: limited time to play.
The amount of time it takes to play a game is a continuum. You have minesweeper or solitaire which take just a few minutes, to RPG's which take tens of hours. The nice thing about a short game, you can string the games together to play for an hour or two.
Unless they are Facebook games.
I'll mention two by name, but I'm sure they are not unique in this regard (indeed you see it in the Frontierville model, where you only have so much energy, and then you have nothing to do).
Diamond Dash
This is a typical matching game like Dr. Mario or Bejeweled. Game play is typical, and it tracks level (a sort of function of number of games played). But it only lets you play 1 game every 8 minutes (games are fixed at 1 minute). And you can only accumulate ~5 games. So, you play for 5 minutes, then you have to go away for an hour.
Triple Town
This actually has some promise. It is a twist on the typical matching game, in that matches are "upgraded" instead of removed (I feel like I have played this style before, but I cannot place it). Successful play is rewarded with coins, which can assist in future games.
Except, you only get one move per minute, and can only bank 75 moves. So again, you play for a few minutes, then you're forced to move on.
What is the reasoning behind this? I cannot imagine. It cannot be server load, because these are Flash games which run locally. Worse, leaving and returning forces a re-download of the app, which must spike their bandwidth usage (although Triple Town seems a lot smarter about caching).
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Eye of the Storm
"Eye of the Storm" (John Ringo) - This is a Posleen spin-off. I never read the Posleen books, because the library doesn't have the first one. When did libraries stop carrying old books? It's sad that you can't get anything more than ~10 years old at the library.
I really appreciate Ringo's sense of humor. He's clearly setting up some sort of anime parallel, but I don't know enough anime to be sure if it is exactly the same as one of them, or just flavored for them all. The mil-sf portions are good, as always, and he throws in a good twist at the end. Hopefully the library has the next one, as it is a cliff-hanger...
I really appreciate Ringo's sense of humor. He's clearly setting up some sort of anime parallel, but I don't know enough anime to be sure if it is exactly the same as one of them, or just flavored for them all. The mil-sf portions are good, as always, and he throws in a good twist at the end. Hopefully the library has the next one, as it is a cliff-hanger...
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Version Control By Example
"Version Control By Example" (Eric Sink) - I got this book for free (thanks Reddit!)
I admit I was skeptical at first. The book includes discussion of a new DVCS (Veracity). The DVCS environment is already very crowded (git, hg, bzr, bk, fossil, darcs).
The version control by example part is straight forward and pretty well done. There is one example which is repeated four times (svn, git, hg, veracity). But the author's humor resonated with me, and I found myself looking for the slight changes (which were always funny). It makes for a fast read.
The two big players right now are git and hg. I like git, but I will be the first to admit it is special. It makes a lot of sense to a hacker, and very little sense to anyone else (especially those who are used to svn). git really needs a front-end with a command set oriented towards people used to svn.
As I've mentioned, I hate hg. I shouldn't, but using it everyday in a fashion it's not really designed for makes me blame it. About once a week (twice this week), it just flakes out and refuses to work with any command (even hg log). Then I have to find the documentation on how to fix it, and I lose a half hour.
Fossil has some people excited because it integrates a few developer tools (wiki and bug tracking, IIRC). Veracity is similar, it has a distributed/versioned database which is used to implement these sorts of things (and user permissions).
As Sink points out, what good is it to commit code offline, if you can't update the documentation and the bug database?
I still have worries that veracity (vv) is oriented towards the svn/hg mindset (immutable history). If it can support all the flows from git, I could make the switch...
I admit I was skeptical at first. The book includes discussion of a new DVCS (Veracity). The DVCS environment is already very crowded (git, hg, bzr, bk, fossil, darcs).
The version control by example part is straight forward and pretty well done. There is one example which is repeated four times (svn, git, hg, veracity). But the author's humor resonated with me, and I found myself looking for the slight changes (which were always funny). It makes for a fast read.
The two big players right now are git and hg. I like git, but I will be the first to admit it is special. It makes a lot of sense to a hacker, and very little sense to anyone else (especially those who are used to svn). git really needs a front-end with a command set oriented towards people used to svn.
As I've mentioned, I hate hg. I shouldn't, but using it everyday in a fashion it's not really designed for makes me blame it. About once a week (twice this week), it just flakes out and refuses to work with any command (even hg log). Then I have to find the documentation on how to fix it, and I lose a half hour.
Fossil has some people excited because it integrates a few developer tools (wiki and bug tracking, IIRC). Veracity is similar, it has a distributed/versioned database which is used to implement these sorts of things (and user permissions).
As Sink points out, what good is it to commit code offline, if you can't update the documentation and the bug database?
I still have worries that veracity (vv) is oriented towards the svn/hg mindset (immutable history). If it can support all the flows from git, I could make the switch...
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