I've had to switch my iPad to "Bold Text".
It's in the accessibility settings.
The default "OMG iOS7!!" font is annoyingly too thin for my old decrepit eyes.
Also, new iOS7 Notes is in no way as nice as the old skeuomorphic edition. It's bland, unoriginal, and tasteless..
As a result, this week's newsletter is being writtenwith my eyes slightly squinty, and a mild headache coming on.
I don't like this.
I preferred the skeuomorphic stuff.
This is shit...
Apologies if there's any really annoyingly quirky autocomplete based issues in this week's newsletter.
iOS7 seems to have an annoying habit of not accepting my insertion of apostrophes, and is desperately trying to fix things that aren't broken.
For example, where I just typed "aren't broken", it tried to fix it to "aren't tbroken", because it seems to think I don't know what I'm doing when I try to actually make use of the apostrophe key, but will happily accept tbroken as an actual word..
FFS, this is going to take some getting used to..
HoboBen discusses whether or not people should be bothered about Endians, and whether or not that even matters anymore. socoder.net/?topic=3654
; HTML Generation
The basic idea is that you create a tool that works a bit like PHP does, except it essentially runs through a bunch of scripts, and spits out raw .html files.
Think of it like a HTML compiler, whereas PHP is more of an interpreter.
The result is that you're only serving basic HTML files, so everything's a little easier on the server.
.. Of course, you won't have any nice interactive PHP stuff, but.. Not every website needs that! socoder.net/?topic=3655
; Cobra's Final Farewell
It's a shame to see a programming language fall apart because the developer actually had a life beyond the language.
In many ways, I prefer single-developer-built languages. The goal is clear, the targets are never too big, and by the end everything tends to be quite stable, as the single developer only has himself to blame if things break. .. Whereas with a multi-dev language, any failures are generally passed around until a fix arrived. Sure, with a multi-dev language, the fix might appear quicker, but you never truly get a sense that they give a shit!!
Graham SqueakyDuck CobraGuy seems to have had his fill of Cobra, and with work, life, and other stuff, he's pretty much calling it a day.
Cobra will probably live on, but it won't be properly supported.
But, hey, it still works! And until the day that it doesn't, that makes it "a working language!" in my eyes!! socoder.net/?topic=3652
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- All Good Things
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Primary school, let's say around about 1989/90 or thereabouts. I would've been about 9 or 10 years old.
My odd warped sense of humour was at an all time high, given all the craziness going on in my life.
Part of me wanted to do something completely moronic, and I started to blatantly lie to other kids at school. Nothing believable.. Things so insane they would get an odd giggle from the other person.
I'm not sure why I enjoyed doing this, but I got a kick out it, none the less.
I can't remember half of the oddities I came up with during this period, but one has remained.. I once told a kid that me and another mate were in fact, secretly, The Oliver Twins..
Pretty sure he didn't believe me, (I hope!!) but that one seemed to stick around for a LONG time, constantly getting weird callbacks right up until we all went our separate ways, going to different Secondary Schools..
Last I heard, that guy was actually working at Codemasters! He said I'd "inspired" him.
Good for him!! There's nothing better than being inspired by the general insanity of a crazy person!!
In related news, The Oliver Twins have announced, this week, that they're closing up shop on their Blitz Games company.
They have a few leftover projects to complete, but once they're done, they're going to be closing for good.
A shame..
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Learning With Shroom_Monk
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A recent topic by Spinal resulted in Shroom Monk pointing out an error in my "circle maths" code. It seems obvious, now, that my code was wrong, but no matter how often I've used it, it never occurred to me that I was doing it wrong.
Shroom's pretty much reinvented the wheel, as far as me drawing/using circles is concerned.
With "simple maths, a reminder" as his target, Shroom's taken it upon himself to write a few basic tutorials.
First, he tackles degrees, radians, and why you should opt for one over the other.
Personally I tend to stick to degrees, but then I'm also sticking with x=sin,y=-cos, because I'm set in my ways, and that's just the way I learnt!! So I guess I'm not the best person to ask about this!! socoder.net/?article=37003
Next up is Trigonometry where Shroom tackles good old SohCahToa, and all those other things that everyone but me seemed to hate in Maths lessons.
I was SO into my maths, at GCSE!!
Where did all go wrong?
.. Oh yeah, A-Levels... socoder.net/?article=37004
Lastly, Shroom digs his heels into Vector maths.
Here, he discusses ways to take the product of two or more vectors, and coping with multipliers and other things.
Always handy for player movement, guidance systems, and things like that, and it's usually simpler maths than dealing with angles, IMO. socoder.net/?article=37007
I'd like to thank Shroom for these lovely pieces, and hope he'll be posting some more in the future.
