Rambling Coutu

Another day of games

2012-02-07T21:07:00.000-05:00

I took the drive down Woburn, MA for Unity Games 18, to get another day of games in. This time a couple friends went down with me. We played through a number of games that I wanted to try out as well as some extra ones. Here's my take on the games we played:

Kingdom Builder - This game has very simple, deceptive (at least for me) mechanics. The part that kept tripping me up was that when placing new pieces they had to be next to your currently played pieces if that was possible - otherwise you could place them anywhere. My brain had a hard time keeping track of this when switching terrain. To be sure the rules were clear - it was just my brain fog. We all felt this was a solid game and it is definitely going on my wish list.

Discworld Ankh-Morpork - Based on the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett - one of the guys I went with knows the books and was curious, so we gave it a whirl. Each player takes a character that has a different victory goal (though all the goals aren't unique) and you go about trying to make that happen. The trick is that the goals are kept secret so while you're going for yours you need to try keeping other goals from coming about. Easy game to learn that was enjoyable, but not one that I'm wanting to own. (Though the guy who knows the books liked it so it might still end up at game nights, which I won't complain about. :))

Eminent Domain - A deck building game that was very enjoyable. It had a completely different feel from Dominion, other than building up a deck of cards. The theme was nice in that you were exploring planets (that stay in the place in front of you) and colonizing or using military to conquer them. You deck consists of role cards, that are more effective the more you have at a time, and technology improvements that you get through the Research role (which can help with Roles as well). This was a very enjoyable and definitely one on my wish list.

Santiago de Cuba - Initially I was thrown off by the randomness of how the board was setup, but after thinking about it for a bit I realized the changing of the Cubans and the Buildings makes for interesting combinations that need to be accounted for in each game. The main play has you driving a car around to stop in front of the shop for a Cuban or the port to load up the ship with goods. However, you can move the car extra (for some money) to get what you want, or (maybe more importantly) to go past something someone else really wants. Another for the wish list!

Wiz-War - This game got a big-ole thumbs down from all of us. The build quality was nice, but the rules were annoyingly complex for a game that was essentially all about beating up the other players and/or stealing their treasure. It would be good for slap stick game if it wasn't so painful to start up. Apparently, it's a remake of a game that was notorious for bad rules. For my money I'd rather play Dungeon Twister - though I haven't played that with the 3/4 player expansion.

Princes of Florence - The first thing that struck me about this game was the font used for things, which really threw me off at first. For some reason I found it distracting, even though I felt it was appropriate for the theme. Once I got past that, however, I was able to enjoy this auction game - though in this play I initial severely misjudged what my friends wanted while I was trying to up the bid only to increase what they paid for things. I enjoyed the balance of things and would definitely pick up this classic.

Africa - I consider myself a fan of Reiner Knizia's game designs, but this one left me pretty board. You have some limited options available and for the most part you felt you were at the mercy of the tiles you flipped up. There were ways to work with what you got, but it felt too luck heavy and didn't make any of us really want to play it again.

Medici - Another, more respected, Knizia game with an auctioning mechanic. This revolves around the very simple mechanic of players taking turns proposing a set of 1 - 3 items to be shipped of different values. Players get one chance to bid on each set and if they win they spend money and put them in the 5 spaces on their ship. More money is acquired by having the 1st and 2nd most point totals on their ship or the most items shipped per good. So you're constantly balancing how much it is worth to go for any given offer. I'd love to play this and while not at the top of my wish list, I still hope to get it. I'd also like to play it with more people.

I was going to try out Troyes, but I saw it in their silent auction along with Masters of Venice and since the money goes to charity I figured what the heck and bid it up. Not that I knew anything about the second game, but now I'm looking forward to pulling them out at a future game night.

Glad I was able to make it down for another Unity Games and hopefully I'll be able to snatch up the games I tried out sooner than later. :)

Null values injected when mixing Grails and Spring-batch

2011-12-01T16:18:00.001-05:00

Mild annoyance that I haven't found the root cause for, but I'm finding that not all mistakes I make in wiring up a job (like missing tag closings or pointing to a bean that doesn't exist) showing up as errors when running tests. Instead it just injects null values and leaves me scratching my head. I assume this is because I'm using grails and not just straight spring, but again I'm still looking for the root cause.

Grails switching to and from inline plugin usage

2011-01-28T13:23:00.002-05:00

We had developed some local plugins that would be installed in our main app when it was deployed. However, during development it was very convient to have them inline. Unfortunately, trying to switch back to inline usage we kept seeing a message indicating that it wanted to upgrade the plugin. Saying yes would cause it to delete the local folder and download the deployed version.

We were using a settings.groovy file in our ~/.grails that indicated the location for inline usage with "grails.plugin.location.pluginname". However, since we deployed the plugin with a name like 'plugin-name' it seems the two didn't match up. By using "grails.plugin.location.'plugin-name'" instead it worked like a champ.

Hrm...wonder if some validation could be added to help out with that - though I guess most people would just be consistent with the names...*sigh*

October 2 - Endurace Aventure Race

2010-10-16T12:36:00.006-04:00

This is a recap of the adventure race put on by Endurance Aventure on October 2nd, 2010.

Adrienne and I made the drive up to Saint-Donat, QC starting about 3:30 on Friday night so we could make it up for registration which closed at 9 pm. We weren't nearly as organized for this race as we were for the Bitter Pill, since each of us were coming off busy work weeks. Thanks to Adrienne for taking a little extra time off on Friday we had everything we needed even if we hadn't organized our packs.
After the race check in we got together with the other team that I knew up there from Dealer.com and went out for a couple drinks. After that both of us were exhausted and we needed to get some Zs.

Here's an overview of the course that I put together.

In the morning we had to get to the place we registered by 8 am with a couple of detours on the way to drop off our bikes and our pfds and paddles. When we got to the registration place again we got our maps and had about 1/2 hour to look them over. Then we got to listen to about 30 minutes of French, followed by about 10 minutes of quick English instructions. There was only one part that was confusing to me, but I thought I got it. I'll admit I was disappointed since I was hoping for some nav challenges, but other than a 200 meter trek off trail (which they apologized for and as it turned out a trail was available) it was all on trail. As we'll see, though it might have been for the best that they didn't have any serious nav challenges (though I'd like to think it would've woken me up...).

When everyone was ready they load us into a couple buses and drove us to downtown Saint-Donat. We had a bit of time to wait and the temperature was a little on the chilly side, but at 9:30 we were given the green light and everyone started moving. We had about a 1/2 mile jog to where our bikes were. We quickly got on our bikes and got on the trail. Unfortunately, Adrienne's bike was again not quite tuned up. After running into a couple issues we switched so I could check it out (not that I could do much for it, but I also was determined for her to not have two crappy mountain biking experiences in a row :) ). As it turns out the front derailleur wouldn't allow it into third and the rear one had trouble going from fifth to fourth. On top of that the tires created so much drag that the bike was horrible going up hills and through sand. Fun.

The bike to TR2 was on an easy trail, unfortunately during this trip we realized that we had no idea what the scale of the map was. (Afterwards we learned - though I think it was relearned in my case - that there are two standard scales and the maps we were using were 1:50.) Additionally, the area that I didn't understand from the directions got us. They told us Chemine Wall would be going down hill in the opposite direction and we'd see a blue trail marker for the cycling trail. For some reason I took opposite to mean it would be on the other side of a four way intersection. So when we came to a three way intersection with the road to the right kindof doubling back and going down hill it didn't make me think we were there. It didn't help that of the two teams we saw at that intersection one went each way. We discovered our mistake when we saw a sign for for Route 329 back 1.8 km the way we came.

The biking took us a lot longer than I would've liked, but neither of us are especially strong at that. Regardless around 11:30 we were making our way into the woods for what looked like a quick three checkpoints. Sadly my brain had turned off. Every intersection I was guessing where we were and forgetting to confirm what was around us and what the terrain looked like. Part of that was due to us not knowing the scale, but a lot of it was me just not looking around and confirm where a freekin' lake was. Or where a hill should be. Heck, even what direction we're going (though I did do a little of that towards the end). Needless to say this did not make for an enjoyable hike in the woods. We ran into a team a couple times that was making similar mistakes, but at least one of them was able to piece things together and get us back on the right track. We got all three checkpoints and made it back out without any more issues.

We came off the mountain just before 2 pm and not in a great state of mind. I was severaly disappointed with myself for messing up the navigation so much. After discussing our options we decided that we'd just assume not do the technical mountain biking, but just get on with the kayaking. So we stayed on the road around to the TR3. (After the race we heard that a number of teams had trouble with CP4. So given my navigation issues it made me even happy that we made that choice.)

So we dropped our bikes off at TR3 and made the short walk to the kayaks. I'll confess - Adrienne was hoping for a jog, but my right knee was bugging me almost all day and I wasn't up for it. We dropped our packs, put on our PFDs, and grabbed paddles and an inflatable kayak. Nice thing about these kayaks - easy to carry. Not so nice thing - they can deflate. (After the race a team told us there's was losing air on one side and by the end of the paddle they had to lean to the right to stay afloat.) The paddle was a nice change and we didn't have any issues with it other than a cloud blocking the sun from us for most of the time.

We left our kayaks, paddles, and PDFs, snagged up our packs and made our way back up to where we left the bikes. From there we had to go up the ski slope which wasn't too bad - though I was certainly not charging up it. At CP9 they a two rope bridges setup across the slope. We each went across which wasn't too difficult (as long as I wasn't trying to catch up to Adrienne). My arms were sore for the next couple days, but I only noticed it when I held them above my head.

Then we made it to the top - found the final checkpoint, took a couple pictures , and traipsed back down the hill. Even found enough energy at the end to run to the finish - it helps that they have the podium with the loud speaker and I was able to understand enough French to know they were talking about us.

Somehow we ended up 23 out of 33 and 2 in our division of 6. The scenary was nice and that does seem to be there focus, but I was disappointed by the lack of a technical navigation section. So in the end, while we had a good time and met with a challenge I don't think I'll make the trip back up for more of their races.

2010 Bitter Pill Adventure Race Recap

2010-08-09T17:28:00.012-04:00

Here's my recap of how things went for the Passing Grade team in the 2010 Bitter Pill. I put together a loose representation of the course in google maps.

During check-in at the Town & Country Resort at Stowe we were told that we had to be ready for 3:45 am on race day. A little earlier than usual and Darren moved up his wake-up time to 2:15. I'll admit I was dreading that time - especially as we were still awake around 10, but in the end it gave me plenty of time to get fully awake.

On our way to the restaurant where we were to gather we saw the three buses pulling into the parking lot. Once all the teams had gathered we piled onto the buses. There was a lot of speculation as to where we were going and it turned out to be a 45 minute drive as we drove into Waterbury, took a left onto Route 2 and eventually found our way to the Crosset Brook Middle School in Waterbury. Chris gave the instructions, then handed out maps. This year when they allowed us to open the maps the race would be started - no chance to scope things out ahead of time. Things went quicker than expected and we ended up waiting for 5 to come around for the race to start. Needless to say it was a little chilly and I felt the need to do a little warming dance while waiting for the start.

Finally, the start was announced. I cracked open the map, set the declination on my compass, considered trying to figure out where we were and where we needed to go, then just said let's jog. So we jogged after the other teams. In hind sight, this wasn't horrible, but we did follow through some pricker bushes and wet grass. Taking a moment to follow the road back out might have been the smarter move, but alas - I'm still trying to improve my brain at the start of the race.

After a bit of a jog we made it to the canoes. We already had our paddles which they gave out at the start, so we grabbed a canoe and got in. Darren was up front, Adrienne in the middle, with me left to steer. The water was low enough in certain areas and we didn't pay attention well enough that we found ourselves bottoming out a couple times along the river. After about 4 miles we reached the portage.

There were two landing spots for getting out of the water. We nicely chose the one with the steeper slope. As we were pulling in the team in front of us flipped their canoe. Darren jumped out to help and quickly realized the water was up to his chest. After helping them get their canoe sorted out, we were able to get ours out of the water and start the portage. The portage was nothing compared to last years, but it did involve going over a small hill. So after about a 1/4 mile we were able to put our canoe back in the water.

Next we had three check points to get along the water with a mile or so of canoeing between each. We also decided to switch positions in the canoe and put Adrienne up front and Darren in the middle. Darren's height made it easy for him to lay back, but still get an effective paddle on, which seemed to be a good choice. The first two check points were simple - the only issue being trying not to cause a collision with the other canoes going for it. The last check point we made the mistake of letting Adrienne off at one end of the island when we bottomed out again and agreed to pick her up at the other end. 1) We split up; 2) the island was covered with some pretty thick growth which made moving from the far end difficult; 3) Adrienne found out later that she got some poison ivy. Fortunately, she did get the check point and we got back in the boat. Just a little further and we got to drop the canoe off and get on the bike.

We took time to look at the maps, rearrange our gear, and get a nice photo before mounting up. We went East on Cochran Road to Duxbury Road to Honey Hollow Road. During this leg it seemed that Darren was having trouble keeping up, so I pulled up after turning on to Honey Hollow Road to make sure everything was okay. Turns out both Darren and Adrienne's derailleurs were messed up. Adrienne couldn't get to her upper gears and Darren was limited to only four. With Darren's hip not being 100%, this ended up giving him a lot of trouble through the day. That, combined with the how steep the road was we did a lot of walking up Honey Hollow Road. (I still don't think Adrienne believes me that top teams will bike most if not all of that.)

Finally, after getting to the top of the trail (after Honey Hollow Road was done) we were at TA3. We had a great transition time here, though we used most of it to wander off into the woods and pee. While walking up the hill we'd already conferred and decided we'd Northern CPs and work our way South with the hope that the trail we could see on our maps leading towards CP9, would give us an easy walk back to TA4. (Sadly, I found out later that going South was the better choice.) While we had some doubt going to CP6 we didn't have too much trouble. CP4 wasn't any more difficult, though we did slide East some to try avoiding what looked like a steeper slope. We made our way toward CP5, but tried finding it on the first ravine we came to. I missed on the map that there were a couple of ravines before the one we wanted. After a while of not finding CP5 we opted to continue on for CP8. Sadly, in hindsight the third stream we reached was the one we needed and if we'd gone further up it we would've found it. Finding CP8 wasn't an issue - though we did find a HUGE patch of nettles that we went through on the way. From there we set off for CP7. We found the stream easy enough and went up it quite a bit, but as the terrain started getting steeper we began doubting and thinking we missed it. So we made the choice to double back. About 20 minutes later we found CP9 and realized we must have been very close to it. We burned too much time and made the choice to continue back to TA4.

After a brief rest and a little whining about the missed points we got back on our bikes for a short ride before getting on the Catamount Trail where we had to walk (and lift over some fallen trees) our bikes. As we followed the trail through the gap there were two optional points on the peak to the North, but the cut off for the swimming portion was 4 o'clock and we weren't going to make it if we didn't keep moving. After CP10, we took a series of improving roads down into Huntington for a stop at Beaudry's to buy a toy frog for a $1. (Jim, the race designer, had mentioned this place a couple times and now I know where it is!)

Next we took Bridge Road to Pond Road to get to TA5. We had to leave our bikes by the road and make our way down a steep slope to water. Let me tell you, this was some fine water. Think Lake Tahoe. Maybe the Caribbean. A beautiful blue and so crystal clear you can see 10 feet down. Got that in you mind? Great, now think the exact opposite. There you go. Murky water, with a great alge green tinge, and lots of seaweed. Did I mention the leeches? Adrienne had the pleasure of seeing one swimming on the water. The check points were simple, but we had some fun on the way. Darren picked up some trash floating in the water and notice that it was a passport. As we got to CP12 the team there was searching around for it. Darren the hero again. I had some fun with my left arm and leg cramping up - thankfully at different times. I didn't think I was doing bad up till this point, but the swim got my muscles good and tired.

Then it was back onto the bikes for what seemed like a short bit North to Cochran Road to Duxbury Road to Honey Hollow Road. As we came down the final hill and saw a bus, Darren made the comment that he'd never been so happy to see a school bus before.

Overall, we were in the woods for 11 and 1/2 hours. We loved the course and recognized that it beat us up. Adrienne got her first taste of adventure racing and wants more. In previous years I'd had issues keeping myself fueled since I had no easy way to get to my food during the race. The purchase of shoulder strap pouch helped me have some gel and a bar available for when I didn't want to take the time to get my pack off. I was disappointed about not getting all of the nav points, especially when we were in the area for them. Unfortunately, we had started feeling the press of time (and possibly disappointment) so we didn't take as much time to think about it as we probably should have. Also, I learned some subtle benefits to the order CPs are approached. If we had gone South for CP9 first we would've known that we needed to keep going for CP7. Additionally, the trek from CP8 to CP5 would've been shorter, which would've left CP6 as the possibly trickier nav given the other streams we encountered. Next year is definitely in the plans for me (I'm pretty certain there will be enough Passing Grade alumni pushing me to race even if I wasn't :) ) and I hope to improve the navigation part of my game and get them all for next year. (Uh...to any GMARA course designers reading this - no, that isn't a challenge to make it the hardest nav ever.)

Locking in estimates before design!?

2010-05-18T06:23:00.004-04:00

Getting some ball park estimates in for a project at the beginning, to give an idea of what is expected is fine. Locking them in and indicating that missing them is very bad (note - no designing has been done), seems irresponsible.

Hopefully I can get some idea as to what is driving the need for them to be solidified that early. I suspect it has something to do with a weekly meeting, but I'll have to have some conversations first.

LDAP PagedResultsResponseControl

2010-03-04T09:39:00.002-05:00

I'm guessing there's a logic reason for it, but I find it extremely annoying that the PagedResultsResponseControl is not available until the after the results have been walked through. This forces me to handle the list in some way at the point I'm making the LDAP request (when I wouldn't think the system would be aware of the object being worked on just that it's got a query) or have some way of going back for it (which makes the rest of the system have to be aware that it's working with LDAP and paging).

Spring has a solution for this I should look at more to see if I'm missing something.

Unity Games XVI

2010-02-09T21:14:00.007-05:00

How can 15 hours of games be wrong!? Especially when I got to play a bunch of games that I hadn't played before and they all were enjoyable. I'm really glad there are people willing to organize such an event. Here's my thoughts on the games I played through the day.

Endeavor - A resource balancing game that requires you to keep things balanced to avoid falling behind. The game is moderately long, taking an hour or two. I really liked how you had to balance your resources and weigh the worth of getting what you want versus giving your opponents the next thing you expose. While not my top pick of the day it's on my list of games that I want to own.

Saint Petersburg - A relatively simple game with some nice subtleties. Cards are flipped up that players buy, but only a maximum of eight cards can be shown at a time. So if people don't take the cards showing, the next round will have less cards flipped over for it. In general, the cards get you money or victory points. You need the money to buy the cards, but the victory points win you the game. Apparently there are a couple cards in the base version that aren't very well balanced that are fixed in the expansion. Regardless I really liked this game.

Ad Astar - Each player has a set of action cards that vary only slightly. Beginning with the starting player each player places one of their action cards on any of the available spots that dictate the order the cards are played in. Then the cards are turned over in order and players take the action of the card. There's an advantage to playing your own card, but, generally, you can take action on another player's card. In addition to this there are planets that provide resources or alien artifacts that you need to send a ship to explore. My first impression wasn't really favorable for this game. There's a lot going on, but it seems like a lot of randomness which sapped the fun of it from me. I'd be willing to give it another try and I suspect it will get better as I learn to better guess what other people would want. I'm just not sure that this would ever break it into the games that I want to own.

Smallworld - This game reminded me of a light version of Civilization. You take control of a race, conquer spaces on the board, and get points. Each race has a bonus and a random enhancement. As people start fighting for spaces you'll start losing people and reach a point where you can't do anything more with your race and you'll need to go into decline. The turn you go into decline you can't do anything but score points. The next turn you'll get your new race and start all over. I thought this was a decent game, but while in general I like the shorter games I think this is a case where I'd rather just play Civilization. Not that I'd object to this game, but it seemed there were some near useless race/enhancement combos and some really powerful ones (can you say Ghoul/Spirit).

Finca - A simple game to learn and a quick play, but a neat mechanism for messing with the other players. You're trying to deliver fruit to various areas of an island. You get fruit by moving your three farmers around a windmill of 12 fans. Each fan has the picture of a type of fruit. The trick with moving is that you move your farmer a number of spaces equal to the number of farmers on the space you're leaving (self included). Then you collect a number of fruit from the space you land on equal to the number of farmers there (again, self included). I really enjoyed this game and while still not my top for the day, it's one I'd like to own.

Tobago - And finally we come to my favorite game of the day. The goals is to collect the most gold. You get gold by raising the treasures (there are four at a time) that are hidden on the island. Each turn you may move your vehicle or play a card that narrows where the treasure is (things like, not in the largest forest or next to a palm tree). When there is just one place the treasure can be once a player reaches that spot they may raise the treasure. Players are dealt treasure cards equal to the number of clue cards they placed for it, plus one for the player raising the treasure, plus one unknown. The players may look at the treasure cards, but then they put together and shuffled. The top one is flip and players may decide to take it or not starting with the player raising the treasure and followed by the player who played each clue card in reverse order of how they were played. (If this isn't clear, trust me that the rules do a better job and make it clear.) Additionally after each treasure is raised, amulets appear on the island (wash up on shore) in predetermined areas that change after each raising. Amulets help allow you do extra things and you definitely want them (though you have to move to get them and not play a clue card). I found this to be a fairly quick game, with a neat mechanic and some great parts. Definitely on my list to buy and currently at the top!

Hell Rail - It was 11 pm and I was looking for another game. Someone walked up with this, so I figured what the heck. This is a pretty silly game where you're picking up train cars of sinners and dropping them of at different levels of hell. At each level there's a special power that you can use that will either benefit you or hinder the other players. While I've played various rail games, like EuroRails, and enjoyed them this didn't really match up. Not on my list to buy and not really on my list to play again.

LDAP Paging

2010-02-09T20:54:00.006-05:00

This struggle came up because I was trying to generically handle paging for either a relational database or LDAP repository, since the end user can choose either type to store their information.

Databases have several ways of handling paging, both within the query itself or, if it supports scrollable cursors, specifying the position of the cursor in the result set and getting a page of data from there.

I figured there must be something similar for LDAP repositories. Sadly, no. The closest in functionality was an RFC proposal for Virtual List Views. It wasn't accepted and while some Java API was developed for it in the JNDI booster back released for Java 1.4, I've been unable to find any updates for Java 5.

What there is something called Simple Paged Results (RFC 2696). The way it works is you specify the size of your page and the server will give you that many records and a cookie that you must pass in on future requests. You can't change the cookie, which means you're limited to only going forward. This seems a bit annoying when compared to database paging and I just figured there must be something that was equivalent.

Finally I started thinking about what I was using it for and why I would need bi-directional paging. The plan was to use this paging to get thousands to tens of thousands of records at a time. If there was a need to display small pages (like for a UI screen, then I'd let it worry about making smaller pages. The only reason I can see for needing to page backwards would be for a user at a UI screen.

How likely is it that someone is going to want (let alone need) to go through tens of thousands of entries and be able to page backwards? Something, tells me having a limit on the number of requests returned is just fine for the UI. For anything needing to get all of the data there's still the Simple Paged Results that will work just fine.

Glad I stopped fixating on the differences between RDB and LDAP paging and thinking about how it was going to be used...

Polymorphism forgetfulness

2008-10-08T10:06:00.002-04:00

Since I just got into a silly argument and lost because I retrained myself poorly I'm going to write it down several times so I can (hopefully) remember it:

Java uses the object instance to determine which overridden method to look at and the reference of a parameter to determine which overloaded method to call.

Example:


   public class A {
       public void test(A a) { System.out.println("A from A"); }
       public void test(B b) { System.out.println("B from A"); }
   }
   public class B extends A {
       public void test(A a) { System.out.println("A from B"); }
       public void test(B b) { System.out.println("B from B"); }
   }

So which class the test method is called from depends on whether you called new A() or new B(). Which method in that class is called depends on whether you assigned the object to a reference of A or B.

Changing default locale for Java in Windows

2008-09-22T16:10:00.002-04:00

I was trying to test something for a different locale and make the mistake of assuming that what I did actually changed it for java without confirming it. I smartened up and actually tested it and lo and behold it didn't actually change it. The correct way is to go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options, then update the Standards and formats to the desired language and click Apply. If you run a Java program to check out the default locale it will show the new locale.

Mixing horizontal menu styles

2008-09-19T09:10:00.001-04:00

In dealing with my horizontal menu issues and finding issues with item wrapping in Firefox when trying to use display:inline and then hitting up against the infamous z-index issue with IE (nicely explained over at mahzeh.org) when trying to use float I decided to experiment with using both. By default (since it is generally IE that is the culprit) I set things up to use float. Then I use some hacking tags to identify specific IE versions and set float:none which then makes use of the display:inline tag. This seems to work fairly nicely and avoided me having to change the structure of things too much or add a bunch of javascript to get z-index to behave.

Firefox issue with wrapping in horizontal menu

2008-09-16T21:36:00.000-04:00

So I've been trying to make some modifications to a style sheet to get around some funny mapping that is happening when the items get too long. Unfortunately the CSS has gotten pretty complex and looks like it could stand for some refactoring, but I was able to distill out something that I didn't expect for behavior from firefox. Here's what is happening with the menu wrapping that just isn't right:

Then menu consists of an unordered list and list items that each contain a sublist. The quirk of this menu that I'm not used to seeing is the list items for the main menu are organized using display: inline and white-space: nowrap. As it turns out the offending line was in the html file.


<li class="mi-top">
Third Menu

Once I remove any white space from between the > and the "T" everything is fine. My understanding is that it should ignore any line feeds inside of the li tag. I'm going to switch this over to using floats instead of display: inline to see if that will take care of the issue as well.

9/17/2008 - Float followup: Floats took care of it without having to worry about the white space.

Measuring Teams

2008-06-17T22:27:00.000-04:00

I had recently read The Wisdom of Teams which left me with the idea that I've never worked on a real team. In fact any of the jobs I've had have had an averse environment for them, even though some could have benefit from having real teams. Now I've found myself thinking in my current job how I'd define some goals that are clearly defined and something the rest of the potential team could get behind and I keep getting stuck. Even if good goals were eventually around how would we know we got there.

This lead me into measurements where I poked around for a good book on that and decided to read Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations. Robert Austin develops an interesting model for behavior and a compelling case for concern when measuring the performance of employees. It seems that a critical base for helping teams form is likely in working hard to ensure informational measurement can be kept while avoiding motivational measurement. This ties back to the need for trust among team members that is mentioned in The Wisdom of Teams.

That was silly...remember measurements do not make teams, but if a team has measurements then they should strive to be informative instead of motivational.

"Controlled Versus Open" Source Control

2008-02-11T20:07:00.000-05:00

I've started working on a project that is using ClearCase as it's source control tool and I'm still learning how to use it and what it does for us. My previous background has been mostly with CVS and dash of Subversion thrown in. My initial impression is that while CVS seems to focus on keeping it simple, ClearCase seems to be more concerned with making sure there are checks and balances.

As I was looking through the code and seeing things that, while they aren't causing any harm, probably should be fixed (like, unused imports, typos, etc...) I'm realizing that in CVS I would've just done it. By in my new world I'm going to need to submit a formal request explaining what I'm changing and why to get a approval so that someone can create a ticket that I can then check the code out against.

There are times where that checks and balance stuff is really nice - I imagine. Possibly when you're trying to change a piece of code that is central to the application. I wonder how much it squashes peoples desire to clean things up. There must be a happy middle ground, which is something I need to research and think about some more.

Requiring Estimates for Everything!

2007-12-05T09:20:00.000-05:00

This could just be the programming side of me that doesn't want to worry about estimates coming out too strongly, but it seems odd that managers want everything to be estimated ahead of time. The current item in question is knowledge transition. I'm leaving the company I'm currently working at and need to sit down with the developer taking my place. We've come up with a number of things to review and we've got about 10 days to do it in. So I'm trying to figure out what the estimate would be giving my manager.

I suspect the concern is that the project needs to continue moving forward even while we're working on this knowledge transfer. So they want to account for this time in the main project. So that we have an "accurate" end date for the project. My issue that I have not faith in any accuracy of my estimate. The project has been in the works for three years and during that time we've been working in fairly isolated roles. So while I'm really not certain what it's going to take for my replacement to pick up on the stuff. I almost forgot the other catch is that my replacement is part-time.

Hrm - I just don't see how beneficial having the estimate is in the grand scheme of the project.

Smorgasbord of games

2007-11-17T16:38:00.001-05:00

John showed up first this past Thursday and after a quick bite of pizza we decide to sneak in a quick game of Carcassonne. We stayed fairly close through the game, but about a third of the way through John played his big meeple down for a nice bit of farming and I kept focusing on the city life. Towards the end of the game John had most of his meeples tied up and wasn't getting tiles that would allow him to score immediately. I was able to take advantage of several quick road scores and still had meeples for city placement which allowed me to pull ahead. In the end it was just enough as John's big meeple pulled in 36 points to end up 2 points behind me.

After that Chris, Jim and Colin showed up so we pulled out Through the Desert since we had never played with five people. It was a bit chaotic with nobody playing favorites as the game began Chris and Colin getting cut off from an oasis. Chris got himself a nice area blocked off on one side of the board and I got one on the other side. John did a good job getting to the oases, but failed to ensure he had the maximum number of one caravan. Thankfully I picked up that extra one, which combined with a nice blocked off area gave me the win. Scores were me 67, Jim 55, Chris 52, Colin 46 and John 40.

Chris had brought over my copy of Shadows Over Camelot which we hadn't played for a while so we set it up. We were having some poor luck with how the black cards were coming out with a number of grail cards followed by all of the Saxon cards (which hit Colin since he had gone there to fight them) interspersed with Excalibur cards. Four of us ended up at the grail quest and managed to take it out, but we lost Excalibur. Then the cards for the Lancelot quest came in quick turns and before anyone could get to it, it went down. I failed to pay attention to who the traitor might be and was beginning to think we didn't have one so when people started going for the Dragon quest and it was going to give us 7 white swords against 5 black I thought we had it. Sadly since it had been a while since we played we had all (except the traitorous John) forgotten the fact that an undiscovered traitor turns two white swords black. John ended up winning and the rest of us were miffed (especially Chris who had actually thought John was the traitor).

Then we finished with a game of Citadels. We've taken to playing to only six districts because eight seems to take too long and I've found the game stops being enjoyable at that point. Additionally, we prefer using the Emperor instead of the King and this time we also chose the Wizard instead of the Magician. The Thief and Assassin stayed hidden for several rounds during the game, but when they did appear Jim and I took the brunt (even though that was only being affected one round by each of them). Colin intimidated everyone by starting with a building that cost 6, but was worth 8 at the end. Chris was able to build three 4-point buildings in a row which gave a good foundation. I made the mistake of not taking the Emperor when I needed to leaving Chris (who was on my left) and John (who was to Chris' left) starting the round for most of the game. Which is probably why Chris won - the final scores were Chris 26, John 19, Colin 18, Jim 14 and myself 13.

Dragon Slaying

2007-11-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

Tuesday night John and Colin joined me for some slaying of dragons when we played a couple games of Dungeoneer: Dragons of the Forsaken Desert. The first game saw John and I beating each other up with both of us more below 3 health than above. Unfortunately other than the excite in the first round of John and I repeatedly being near to dying the games came down to me getting lucky. In the first game I didn't like one of the quests I had been given, but I was able to get the destinations of the public quest and my other one near to each other. Then when the new public quest flipped up it happened to be in the same area as well and I was able to quickly finish the game.

In the second game I had two escort quests. My first quest pick up location came up quickly and Colin placed it as far away as he could, but I had a bane card that allowed me to swap a desert space with another one. So I moved it right next to the start and quickly completed it in one round. On my next turn I was able to place the remaining map cards which would allow me to complete my quests. On the next turn I completed both quests.

Being a role-player and having played many D&D sessions I love the concept of the game, but I have a feeling we're going to need to come up with some variations (which looking at the updated rules it looks like there are some worth trying) in order for this to be really enjoyable. Currently the game takes too long with too much luck in the cards drawn .

Blind Planning

2007-11-06T10:14:00.000-05:00

So we finally pushed to try doing our development work in blocks of work that would be 6 weeks or less. We're also trying to push for the next block (yeah, I'd say iteration, but seems like a dirty word in my office place) to planned at the end of the first block. Unfortunately the project sponsors are looking for a project plan to be done and we have been unable to convince our project manager to put everything else in the next block as a place holder. This lead to our meeting this morning to attempt to plan out the remaining blocks of development. I suggested that if we were really going to do this that it might be better to actually have access to the requirement files so that we could double check details in the requirements instead of just a summary document (especially since the document we were attempting to plan from was not necessarily accurate with what it was showing since it is maintained separately). I got a flustered look and a restatement of the request.

Nice! My only hope is that the rest of the developers are also looking for coup and we just plan the next block after we get done the first one and let the project manager sort it out. Not the friendliest of approaches, but I feel unable to get our project manager to listen to any of our ideas.

Circle the game camels

2007-11-04T05:50:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday I was joined by Jim, Colin and John and we played two games of Through the Desert followed by our constant closer, Carcassonne.

Colin hadn't played Through the Desert before and was still figuring it out. I ended up striking early and collecting a lot of high point water holes and making many oases connections. John and Jim both cordoned off a 10+ space area with one of their caravans. Fortunately I was able to get a couple small areas and longest in two of the colors and ended up with 84 points, just edging out John and Jim who tied at 81. Colin ended with 40 something.

The second game Colin had obviously learned what he had to and made a couple plays that blocked Jim and my caravans from getting to some oases. He also did a better job at ensuring he got to his own oasis and carving out a little area for himself. This time I was relying more on blocking of territory than connecting to oases. This worked well except that I realized too late that John was challenging me for the longest caravan in one of the two that I could actually do something with. When the dust settled we had each marked off a good sized area and each had at least one longest caravan. Jim got the extra one which proved the difference as he won with 82. Colin and John tied at 81 and I ended up with 79.

Carcassonne was an odd game. We generally have a much better farming area in the games we play, but because of an early profusion of roads, creation of larger cities and a mean play by Jim the meadow stayed fractured. John had started a city that I thought I'd try a quick take over of and put my large meeple (Gurn) into. John made it so he could tie a second one of his meeples in. Jim then played a tile that made it impossible for us to connect the two parts of the city and ever close them so Gurn and two of John's pieces were done for the game and we hadn't even played a third of the tiles. John and I went on a partnering frenzy after that completing a cathedral-ified city plus some other smaller ones a couple roads (including one we took over from Jim that had an inn on it). Jim was still doing well for him self throughout this. Colin unfortunately drew all but one or two of the monasteries and they came at a time when he would've preferred to try horning in on the cities being built. In the end Colin did manage to get 40 points from farming, but the rest of us had already made our points and I succeeded in edging out Jim with John just ahead of Colin.

Task Thrashing

2007-11-02T13:58:00.000-04:00

I'm suffering from no clear direction by my project managers. I'm not sure if it is the way people have learned to do project management where I work of it is an issue with the project I'm on, but on regular basis what I'm asked for a status on changes. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with previous tasks getting done.

I suspect this has something to do with the total chaos that is the requirements and there being no real prioritizing of them. Additionally there's no clear indicator of who needs to work on each requirement. Which I presume leads to complete confusion when trying to figure out what they are expecting to be done next.

I'm not sure what would be the biggest impact to getting clarity on this, but I suspect breaking down the requirements into smaller bite-sized chunks and letting the development team figure out who should work on them and not trying to assign them at requirement creation time might help.

Managers forget how it used to be...

2007-10-31T09:13:00.000-04:00

Obviously this is not the case for everyone, but a colleague of mine who was a manager for a while before coming back to programming expressed that it is easy to forget what drives developers. Managers have their own sets of concerns that they need to drive for.

Document-itis

2007-10-24T13:25:00.000-04:00

I'm currently on a project where it seems every time I turn around a new document has been created for a different way to view the same data. I'm not sure how to stem the tied of this swelling mountain of documents. Part of the issue is that the project is very far behind and management is desperately trying to bring in the hours yet still complete the work requested. So the thought of cleaning up the documentation and perhaps generating other views of the data gets shelved because we don't have enough time...even though we end up looking at data that is incorrect and making decisions off it because we didn't keep documents synchronized.

Managing game mail

2007-10-24T12:51:00.000-04:00

This week John and Colin joined me for some gaming fun. We cracked open my copy of Thurn and Taxis for a couple games and finished with our typical closer - Carcassonne.

The first game of Thurn and Taxis I did a very good job of getting my houses down and getting carriages, but I didn't focus on getting points from the different territories. In fact the only one that I did well on was Baiern where I got the first one. I really thought that I was far behind and trying to play catchup, but I decided to close the game by putting my last house on which allowed me to be the only player with the final carriage. I ended up with a solid win. The one caveat was that Colin forgot he wouldn't get another play if I ended it and he could've put more of his houses down and got the final carriage which would've made for a closer game.

In the second game John and I started by putting our houses in several territories and Colin focused on Baiern. Afterward he conceded that he should have closed out sooner so that he could advance his carriage values instead of following in our tracks on the 7 length route. Other than that things were close between us through most of the game. Towards the end we started getting into the habit of using the Administrator to dump the city cards since we started getting more specialized in our desires. Unfortunately near the end of the game I was trying to get Salzburg to complete the orange area and I used the Administrator and wound up with two of them (if only I'd known that the next card was one!) in the city list. But after starting my route I need two turns with the Postal Carrier to get to 5 houses and another turn to play either two more our to use the Cartwright to get the final carriage. Unfortunately, John only needed two turns to end the game, which got him the win over me by 9 points.

In Carcassonne Colin is almost always strong with the farmers. Often times I ignore that and try going after all of the cities. This time I did put some of my meeples in the field only to have them overwhelmed by Colin's farming focus. Fortunately I was involved in the completion of both citadel cities (one with Colin, the other with John). Between those and a number of late game point sharing with John I was able to hold off Colin's 60+ point end-game surge by 9 points for the win.

Building villages, doing some shipping, then more building

2007-10-16T13:21:00.000-04:00

John, Z and I gathered around the table and revisited the games from the last couple sessions and we each walked away with a win.

We started with Alhambra. This time around we all spent more time focusing on the walls for our city and after the first score we were within 5 points of each other. We got a little better separation in the next round where I started taking the lead being in first or second (or tied for those) for all but the red buildings. Before the end I was able to claim first in white and green, second in brown and red forced a three way tie for first in blue because I ended the game before Z was able to play his third blue to take first. Additionally, I was able to connect a split I created in my walls which helped offset Z getting 21 for his wall. So I wound up winning by about 10 points.

I'm looking forward to playing with four people, but I find the fact that the money and the buildings are random annoying. Perhaps I'll try focusing more on what money the other players are picking up, but I find my brain has been up to the task the last couple nights. :)

Next we played Manila. The first couple rounds a little roller coaster-ish. We all did well on the first round with Z being the harbor master. I ponied up for it the next time and everyone did poorly. John took over for the third round and we all did well again. After that I didn't bother spending enough to get it and focused on maximizing my returns. Z took a chance by trying to play different then John and I and ended up loosing money where we gained. He then spent too rounds trying to use the pirates to jump ahead, but lost his shirt instead. John stayed as harbor master since I wasn't willing to spend more than 12 pesos to try getting it from him. In the end, while I had more than 40 pesos than John his shares gave him 60 points and I only had 10 in shares. I think my frustration with harbor master is that the two times of been it I've rolled poorly for the ship that I've really wanted to do well and I end up needed to use the pilots and lose money in the process. I need to diversify my shares early on so I'm not so caught up on which boat makes it in.

Carcossonne wound up being a farmer battle between John and Z - I couldn't get in the mix and city sharing between Z and I. I missed Z getting into the farming so when we completed a city with a citadel in it for 45 points and shot ahead of John I had no way to reel Z back in. John and I were one tile away from completing another citadel city that would've given me the win, but Z got the piece that would've closed it.

A game night in Manila with Dragons

2007-10-10T13:22:00.000-04:00

So another round of games with John, Z and I. Z showed up a little late, so John and I started a round of Dungeoneer: Dragons of the Forsaken Desert. We played with the #2 cards this time. The game started slow with John's personal quests involving killing a dragon - which he really needed either a level or some bonus cards to do - or rolling a three of a kind on three dice. I had an escort card and I can't remember the other card - bummer.

The map cards that I needed didn't come out for several turns while John got his out early. Unfortunately he had some difficulty rolling a three of a kind, which allowed me to get to where I needed and get my first quest completed. I then made the mistake of trying to get to the end right away by completeting the open quest and teleporting to the destination of my second quest. By this time John had completed his first. He then completed his second and since I was going to win on the next turn sent monsters after me then attacked me killing me before I could complete. Patience would have better served me since I had a movement of 6 and could've run to my destination instead. Oh well...

After Z joined us we played Manila. First off I hosed myself by not fighting hard enough for the harbor master in the first couple turns, then putting too much onto the Pirates - which is really a lucky shot at best. Additionally, I beat on the wrong boat too many times. In the end Z just edged out John, but we all felt that there was a little too much luck involved with just three players and were looking forward to trying again with four or five.

Building game cities

2007-10-03T13:23:00.000-04:00

We had a slim group last night with John, Z and myself in attendance. Z had brought one of his games that he bought over the summer that had yet to be played, Alhambra. Z dominated us by winning two games of Alhambra and the final Carcassonne.

Alhambra is an enjoyable game that reminds me of Union Pacific. You can do one of three options on your turn, with one caveat: 1) Buy building tiles (which can be of six different types with varying costs); 2) Pick up money (which is of four different currencies); 3) Rearrange you alhambra. The caveat is that if you spend the exact amount of money required to buy a building you can select one of the three options again. There are two scoring cards that come from the money deck during the game and a final scoring at the end of the game. Each scoring round you count the number of a particular type of building each player has and score appropriately. Additionally, the building tiles have walls on them and you score points for the longest continuous stretch of wall.

During a players turn four buildings are available for purchase one for each type of currency there is. Four money cards are available of which the player may take only one card or all cards showing that total five or less. Since the buildings and money are randomly selected to replenish those available you have to be flexible with what you are willing to buy.