hazzen

13 lat temudiscuss

SEEKING WORK - Remote (American residing in Berlin)

JS/Python/C++ guy. Well versed in d3.js. Have spent past two years doing vertical feature development, focusing on front end, in JS and Python/AppEngine. Spent three years before that doing backend/algorithm C++ work.

Open for flexible work designing/implementing visualizations and frontends.

Site: http://hazzens.com

hazzen

13 lat temudiscuss

The free ride area also had major consequences for outbound buses during peak hours. If a bus started in downtown and went elsewhere, riders had to pay as they left the bus. Seattle still doesn't allow you to pay at any door on a bus, only at the front with the driver. A crowded bus meant people could not easily get to the front; either the bus sat while people squeezed down the length of the bus, or they simply got off at the rear and didn't pay.

An alternative solution, of course, is to incentivize use of RFID bus passes (already in heavy use), install RFID readers at all doors, and speed up boarding all-around.

hazzen

14 lat temudiscuss

A little late, but I think I fixed this. Working for me now in 17.0/Windows 7

hazzen

14 lat temudiscuss

This is one of the main reasons I'm writing these tutorials - small multiples (nested selections) in D3 are explained very poorly in the official docs, and are a constant stumbling block for coworkers not very familiar with the library.

Sadly, getting around to properly explaining them will take another lesson or two.

hazzen

14 lat temudiscuss

Author here. I've updated my post to include some words on the current Android games market and how none of it maps to the Ouya. Simply, a game written for a 4.5" diagonal phone screen will not scale down to the 2-3" diagonal touchpad on the controller and then back up to the 52" diagonal of a TV. You have lost too much fidelity in the process; the game will feel wrong if it even works at all.

As for Android being the future of gaming - I don't believe it. Why might a motley collection of devices with disparate specs upend a highly focused and adaptable juggernaut, besides it making a great story? This won't kill the current gaming juggernauts anymore than streaming content killed television ones.

hazzen

14 lat temudiscuss

Another thing, related but not frequently discussed, is the change in how important gear is vs. other factors. For instance, in Diablo II a high level item would give +20 vitality. Your character got 5 stat points per level which you could, if you wanted, put all into vitality. This high level item was roughly equivalent to only 4 character levels (of which you got 99).

In Diablo III, a high-level item is giving you 200+ vitality. I don't know about other characters, but I believe my Monk is getting 2 vitality per level (and there are 60 levels). A _single_ item can give me more of a stat than I gain from leveling all the way from 1 to 60. As such, leveling up doesn't do much other than allow equip items with better stats.

Because items in Diablo II gave, comparatively, closer benefits to gaining another level than those in Diablo III, I felt like I was making progress with either a level up or a nice item drop. If my character was getting decimated in Act IV of Nightmare, I could go back and gain a few levels and maybe get some new items in the process. In Diablo III, not only do your levels not increase your survivability or killing power in any way (besides new skill runes), by the time you feel like you aren't strong enough to defeat an encounter you'll most likely have few or even no more levels left to gain. The only tangible measure of progress is "phatter lewt" at this point.

hazzen

15 lat temudiscuss

I stand corrected, and should have checked Craigslist before posting. It is astounding how much rents have gone up recently. The neighborhoods I had in minde were Lower Haight (5 minutes-ish to the N, 10 minutes-ish to the rest of the lines, 15-20 minutes-ish to 16th & Mission BART) or the part of Market near the Castro Safeway (shave 5 - 10 minutes of all of those times). It seems like $1800 might be a better floor, and that is a studio-like thing. Of course, its a small market in those places so you may be able to find better (or worse or absolutely no) prices.

hazzen

15 lat temudiscuss

I would much rather ride a Seattle bus than a SF bus, but the likelihood of finding a bus that goes from A to B (without a transfer) is much higher in SF than in Seattle. This is partly a product of Seattle's shape, where the obvious thing for any bus to do is run north-south from a neighborhood to the downtown corridor. It is also a product of density, which Seattle doesn't really have in large quantities.

And re: expensive neighborhoods for transit. I think your numbers are quite a bit off - sure, if you want to live near the main Caltrain station, you are looking at that much. But you can easily find a large 1 bedroom for $1600 within 5 minutes of the light rail or BART for a total transit time to downtown of 10-15 minutes.

hazzen

15 lat temudiscuss

It isn't quite a barley wine, at least it doesn't taste like any barley wine I've had before. It has some hints of mead, but the grape is what makes it different. If you live in the SF Bay area, you can definitely find this at either City Beer Store or Healthy Spirits.

hazzen

15 lat temudiscuss

Descent came out over a year before Quake and was full 3D (except the annoying hostage sprites). It may have taken advantage of being set in a mine to have twisty passages that obstructed views, but it did have its fair share of wide open spaces (most reactor rooms, for instance). I think the reason Quake gets all the credit is due to its popularity, not for being the first.

hazzen

15 lat temudiscuss

Fun that I can recognize you based on your user name, but you probably can't do the same matching for me (its Mikey).

You were actually one of the people I was thinking of when I originally put in an aside about the really motivated people still doing it. I then removed that aside, but I probably should not have. The really motivated people are going to go into startups; they caught the itch at some point and need to scratch it to remain happy.

The subset of people that could go either way (startup or corporate) don't quite have the opportunity to see what a startup would be like at UW. The capstones are good, but for most they are an afterthought to be done in the final quarter or two, when they have most likely landed a job already. Software Engineering (CSE 403) is more about satisfying a requirement than about building something, and that is all most students end up with.

hazzen

15 lat temudiscuss

My observations as a (somewhat) recent graduate from UW CSE:

Many of the students that wanted to go into startups after graduation instead of a job either had started on some product during school and wanted to see that through to completion, or were of the mind that they could just work for a few years at {Amazon, Google, Microsoft, ...} and then do the risky thing.

There is also a lack of exposure in the curriculum. They are in the middle of re-designing it, but before that only one class let you create a small team, come up with a product, and build it. It was seen as a painful course (it was) and it was also taken by most everyone (including people who couldn't care less, so it was hard to find a group of 4-5 motivated people). I don't recall any hackathons when I was there aside from ACM programming competitions.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

Their brand is that they manufacture the best gaming PCs in the world. But if one only pays attention to branding and not realities, you end up thinking Chevy's are indestructible rocks and that Sprite quenches thirst and gives you the power to play sports.

And in case you missed it, GP mentioned Scan as an alternative. I'll add Falcon Northwest.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

Careful there; you've gone from a fact about yourself to a generalization of everyone in a group. Down that road lies fallacy.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

There was, for a short while, an almost-NY-syle bagel (and definitely the best in the bay) at Roland's. However, he had landlord disputes, and then another dispute with his business partner at the next place he went to. Haven't heard anything since, but if he does manage to have a drama-free business open up again, go.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

There are major slowdowns when running the game in DX10/11 mode on some hardware, especially when scrolling the game map. It is likely that you saw this - when I run it in DX9, it is buttery smooth. In DX10/11, it stutters unbelievably. There was a patch recently which may have fixed the issue, but I haven't played since the game got updated.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

Vim define a macro (stored in q because it is easiest, but to change the name replace the second q with any letter):

  qq<do stuff>q

Emacs define a macro:

  C-x ( <do stuff> C-x )

Vim do that macro again 40 times:

  40@q

Emacs do that macro again 40 times:

  C-u 40 C-x e

Naming a macro in Emacs (so you can have multiple) takes even more keystrokes and I'm not entirely sure on the incantation to repeat a macro from name - none of the help files seem to tell me how to do this, only to save it.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

I lived near there - at Clayton and Ashbury - for a year. Not once did I see any homeless people. There is no way of getting up to that location without hitting at least a block of 15% grade. But the hill did not demarcate the homeless population - it appeared to be Frederick, which is a block further south than Beulah away from Haight.

I had two theories: leaving Golden Gate Park, you end up on Frederick street; going north gets you to Haight St which is a wonderful place to panhandle, going south gets you nowhere. The other theory is that it would have gone further south (maybe a few more blocks to Parnassus), but the Cole/Carl intersection was nice enough, and full of enough families, to push people south the second they get off of the N-Judah.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

Yes and no. If a library assumes a lambda is easy, you will see a lot of code like this (using somewhat bastardized OCaml types):

  interface 'a collection {
    void sort(lt:'a -> 'a -> bool);
  }

So, if you want to use lambdas, you would get:

  foos.sort(fn x y -> x.bar() > y.bar());

And if you don't want to use lambdas, you would get:

  bool sort_by_bar_gt(x:Foo, y:Foo) {
    return x.bar() > y.bar();
  }

  foos.sort(sort_by_bar_gt);

And that is assuming you can nest functions, but chances are you will have to put that function somewhere removed from the actual call to sort. This is the exact problem the STL hits: it assumes, for many things, you want a functional style - and then it doesn't give you a way of writing lambdas. You are left with one-off functors littering your code, wishing you could write that lambda.

I would like to stress: I think lambdas are a requirement for any language, I just take issue with the argument presented to convince lambda haters.

hazzen

16 lat temudiscuss

An immediate issue with the article: the author takes issue with the liberal attitude taken by C++ in adding features and then proceeds to state:

  Maybe you like [lambdas], maybe you don't, maybe you think
  they're God's gift to programming and any language
  without them is an infidel. But adding them would be
  harmless, anyway.

Well I agree on this point, it seems like a poor argument. You can't just declare a feature harmless if you ignore it. You make lambdas first-class and you end up baking them into libraries. Now you must use them.

Otherwise no issues, but it does feel like the author is advocating C++0x minus heavy template metaprogramming - which is a perfectly fine language in my book. Why not just use that and get on with life?

Submissions

A Highly Opinionated List of Coffee Shops in Berlin

Update to Messaging and a Test

D3, Conceptually - Lesson 2

D3, Conceptually - Lesson 1

What Ouya Isn't

Pedal to the Chrome metal: Our fastest beta to date for Windows, Mac and Linux

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