Printed out the example Space Invaders clone, scribbled all over it to make sense of it. Turns out the old method of learning how to program still works pretty well. I guess I’m a visual learner since the simple act of printing the code onto sheets of paper so I could draw on them caused the code to make sense. I sat on my settee and by cross-referencing the code to the Javadocs was able to work out the boilerplate code from the actual game logic.

I also found the possibly dead, but handy Pixen pixel art package for my Mac.

I’m experimenting with some woolly psychobabble ideas too. My PC is in my office and I do work on it. The work is quite interesting and motivating. I also have my Macbook which I could do work on, if I bought the VMWare Fusion key that I need. My Mac has Eclipse installed though, and the SlickSet stuff all set up. It’s turning into a portable devkit quite nicely, and is currently being my “fun” coding environment.

Sure, I could sit at my PC with its twin 19″ monitors, a mouse and a clacky IBM Model M keyboard and run Eclipse. But my Mac lets me sit in my bedroom and code, or do it downstairs in front of the telly. This portability lets me code when I want to, where I want to. Personal coding is supposed to be fun and amusing, rather than something rigid that you’re paid to do. So anything that makes it more fun is going to help with motivation.

I’ll install Eclipse on my PC at some point, just to check the code runs OK in Windows and Linux. I’ll also commandeer Amy’s PPC iBook to see what it’s like on that too She doesn’t know this yet though

On my server, PC and Mac… where’s it all gone? What am I going to do?

I think I need to buy some bigger disks and put them in my server. A terabyte should do me. My PC needs its disk sorting out, there’s Linux and Windows squashed in there, along with a data partition. Then I installed a few virtual machines in Windows and now the Windows partition is full.

If I can offload the data partition onto my server, that can be used for virtual machines instead.

This weekend away has been an excellent chance to test out my home network and remote access to it. Some of the things I’ve done were just as a test, other things have been really useful.

For a start I allow incoming SSH connections so that I can access my server from anywhere outside. I’ve used this for everything from transferring files to setting off backups of my system at home. To maintain consistency between logins, and to cope with faulty Internet connections, I use screen to keep control of my session.

Tip: Use the following .screenrc option to make your many screen sessions less confusing by printing a list of open sessions along the bottom of your display:

hardstatus alwayslastline "%{.bW}%-w%{.rW}%n %t%{-}%+w %=%{..G} %H %{..Y} %Y/%m/%d %0c:%s "

In anticipation of other remote connections I might want to make to my machine at home, I thought about setting up a VPN. There are several options, all described in detail across the Internet, so I’m not going into detail about how to configure things, I’ll just explain what I am using and where I found out the information that made it work. (more…)

I own a number of computers and, like most people now have a network to connect them all together (except I was running networks back when coax-cable was the in thing to use). The system works quite nicely given it is made from junk parts. Since the estate agents didn’t visit today I used the time to sort out my server and tidy up its storage arrangements.

I think I’ve found a cheap way of backing up the large amounts of data that live on my server.

(more…)

I’m a Windows developer in my spare time. I used to write MFC apps in C++ using Visual Studio 6. Then the world changed and now I write Winforms apps in C# using Visual Studio 2005. Windows has a certain way of doing things that I’ve become accustomed (brainwashed) into doing without thinking. Absorbing C# seemed to take about half an hour. I’m now attempting to learn how to write OSX applications.

This is my very first step at learning how to do all that Windows stuff on my Mac, but doing it the Mac way. Witness as I learn totally alien concepts and discover I’ve fatally broken my Mac’s devkit even before running it.

(more…)

Damn, my VMWare Fusion demo expires in three days. Looks like I’ll be without Windows on my Mac until I can afford to buy the full version. Despite being the shortest month of the year, this one has proven to be quite expensive for reasons I can’t quite work out. I think hiring the van and moving the sofa did it, I made use of the van to buy lots of large things that I’d have no other chance to move.

Looks like I’m living on beans for March

I’m running VMWare Fusion on my Macbook. In it is an instance of Windows XP. I have a Samba server on my network that is configured to be a domain controller. If I connect my Macbook to the wired network, VMWare Fusion will create a bridged network device and the XP instance gets its own IP address from my DHCP server.

Irritatingly, if I use the Airport wireless connection, the VMWare bridging doesn’t work. I get a message saying /dev/vmnet0 doesn’t exist. After a bit of reading and asking it seems this is because Airport cards don’t support promiscous mode, which is needed for VMWare’s bridging device.

So since the Windows instance then has to use NAT, it gets given an IP address for a tiny private network living in my Mac, which is totally unreachable from the outside world. Also it means any broadcast messages to discover network services won’t go out onto my real network. The main one being Windows saying “hello, is there a domain controller out there?”.

Took me ages to work out that putting the Samba server’s IP address into the WINS part of the XP instance’s network config solved that problem. I can now do a domain logon over a VMWare NAT connection that is using the Airport card in my Mac.

I still haven’t solved the issue where I need the domain controller to be reachable in order to log in at all. Since this is a laptop it’s a bit of a failure if I can’t log into it with the usual profile when not plugged into my network. I don’t want two profiles as this will cause a right mess of duplicate settings, and me having to configure everything twice. I also don’t want to point the local user’s profile at the cached copy of the network user’s local profile. Somehow my work laptop is configured to allow me to log into the domain, even when the PDC isn’t there.

I’ve just finished making my Linux machine work properly again, VMWare Player run XP on it, and then configured my Samba server to be a PDC. I now have roaming profiles and a real Windows Doman for all these Windows instances I have.

In theory it means I have one set of application settings, rather than having to copy data about manually. I know this does actually work because they do it at school - only they have real Windows servers. I just need to work out the offline profile for my Macbook’s Windows instance. Currently I can’t log on unless I log into the machine itself. Somehow my work laptop is able to log onto the domain even when offline.

Further prodding is required, but not now I need to go to bed.

I’ve got the 30 day trial of BlitzMax on my Macbook. I’m quite bored of wasting time messing around when writing games. So bored that it puts me off beginning anything. I’ve got loads of ideas and I get stuck not knowing where to start, the effort of having to reinvent the wheel making sprite libraries is irritating.

I’ll give BlitzMax a go and see what that’s like. To keep up the motivation I feel like documenting the process on my main website.

I had a good bit of fun with Processing the other week, using the tilt sensor in my Macbook to control stuff on the screen.

This is nuts!

Here is VMWare Fusion running Windows XP on my Macbook. I’ve got it in “Unity” mode where the Windows desktop is not shown; all Windows apps run seamlessly on the Mac desktop. It’s a bit like how OS/2 Warp could show Windows apps by themselves - only not as crap

Once I have installed all the apps I need and confirmed the VM is working I can back it up to a DVD for safe keeping.

I will be using this VM to run Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server Express, so I had better increase the amount of RAM available to the Windows installation. VS 2005 isn’t happy in half a gig of RAM, its dialog designer grinds to a halt.