Some more treehouses

Very long time since the last post. Forgot how much I love blogginng. Unfortunately, my 'Treehouses of the World' post has fallen into some disarray (dead images which I'll try to fix up at some point).

However it looks like someone on Tumblr have long since picked up the torch on treehouses. Tumblr is great format for this type of stuff. So get off your couch and back into your tree, check out 'Fuck Yeah Treehouses!'

Google 'Hacker' search

Just discovered this, google search in 'hacker speak' format. Google to Google Hacker here.

Making Isometric Games Book

For those still interested in isometric games, O'Reilly Books has a new title called Making Isometric Social Real-Time Games with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The blurb on their website:

Walk through the process of designing and implementing from scratch an isometric real time game such as some of the most succesful Facebook Games. Applying HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, this piece shows how to build games using isometric map making, sprite animations, networking, social network integration, high performance rendering and game design.

Using your browser as a game engine is interesting indeed - and shows that there is still a lot of life left in traditional 2D game concepts. For a list of isometric game engines, click here.

Monkey from Mars - UFO Hoax

Here's a strange little story about a UFO hoax that took place in Georgia, USA during the 1950's. A dead, exfoliated and tail-docked monkey was used to play a practical joke on gullible UFO believers.

This story was taken from here and of course wikipedia.

At the height of UFO hysteria then sweeping the nation, two young barbers and a butcher took a dead monkey in 1953, lopped off its tail and applied a liberal dose of hair remover and some green coloring to the carcass.

Then they left the primate on an isolated road north of Atlanta in the pre-dawn hours of July 8, 1953, burning a circle into the pavement with a blowtorch before a police officer came around the curve in his patrol car.

"If we had been five minutes earlier, we would have caught 'em in the act," said Sherley Brown, the officer who happened on the scene.

The barbers, Edward Watters and Tom Wilson, and the butcher, Arnold "Buddy" Payne, told the policeman they came upon a red, saucer-shaped object in the road that night. They said several 2-foot-tall creatures were scurrying about and the trio hit one with their pickup before the other creatures jumped back in the saucer and blasted skyward — leaving the highway scorched.

Canvas 2D game engine - Flax.ie

Canvas is bringing some unique opportunities to the isometric gaming world. Here's a new 2d game engine I've add to my isometric game engine list:

The Flax Engine (henceforth called Flax) is to be a 2D game engine for the web, using features introduced in HTML5, specifically the canvas and audio tags. Flax will be developed in Java using GWT 2.0 to cross compile the code into robust JavaScript code which will run across all mordern browsers and is intended to be a native framework for developing 2D browser-based games. Adobe Flash is used to program the vast majority of browser-based games (with Java applets coming distant second), though Flash is not supported on many mobile devices (specifically, any running Apple’s iOS) and is also rather heavy on hardware requirements. Also with the upcoming release of an operating system which completely depends on the Internet for its applications and data storage (Chromium OS) we are very excited about being able to develop games for these type of mobile devices.

How to sabotage a job opportunity

My job sometimes requires me hiring some very skilled programmers for companies. I'm no headhunter (I profession I disdain) but I am proud of the fact I've placed several key people into roles they love in a company that values their expertise. Overall I've placed about 8 people in various programming jobs. Not a high number at all, but I am not a headhunter. An interesting observation is that out of those 8 people I've hired, only only one was local.

One thing that always irked about people who were applying for jobs is an attitude of 'entitlement' - this either killed the job opportunity or kept the hiree from future growth. Some examples.

• One applicant from Western Europe wanted to a full range of medical, leave and other benefits that are not available here in this country. This was for a job from a self funded startup. Lack of doing 'your homework' about the country you want to move to as well as the company itself left bad taste in mouth. It especially irked me to hear "Because I'm from [x] country - No one will hire me!" - no one will hire you because you are making unreasonable demands!
• One North American applicant was going swingingly through the application process. The salary and work was agreed upon. One the third interview out of the blue the applicant demands 10K more in salary - startling us. I wasn't so much the 10K - it was more the attitude of greed. We said that after a trial period we would be more than happy to increase his salary but demanding it upfront was in bad taste. Needless to say, he left without a job.
• Last example actually came from a successful applicant. This applicant was actually a very honest person and terrific negotiator. He was very good during the interview process and managed to get salary that was substantially higher than not only the other programmers but more than the directors of the company themselves!
  
  So whats wrong with that? Nothing - but the problem was that this was a start up. Since he negotiated salary - something more in the 'here and now' he missed out hugely on getting shares of the company. Other programmers started out much lower than him and got shares and now make much more than him. He is still the highest salaried employer in the organisation- but will never be offered shares because he felt 'entitled' to get a high salary.

The people that were hired were hungry to prove themselves - proud of the coding abilities but with a realisation that sometimes you have to start a bit humbler to get places - and I can say these guys are all getting paid very well now!

Google Blogger Custom Domains for NZ, AU Domains

I recently helped a friend set up a blogger custom domain for Australia (.com.au) and New Zealand (.co.nz) registrars.

For the most part, its fairly straight forward - you can add a cname record as detailed here http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=58317.

However for some registrars in New Zealand and Australia it doesn't quite go so smoothly. The 'www' would go to the blogger site, where the naked domain still remained parked at the registrar. For instance:

www.custombloggerdomain.com would go to google blogger (yay!)
customerbloggerdomain.com would go to registrar parking page (boo!)

As usual, the registrar support system was very poor. However I found a link from google that was a lifesaver: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373

You have to set up an addition 'A' Record with Google's IP for the 'naked' domain and set the name for the www domain. So it should look a bit like this:

Hostname: customerbloggerdomain.com
Record Type: A
Value: 216.239.32.21

Hostname: www.customerbloggerdomain.com
Record Type: CNAME
Value: ghs.google.com

It was the first time I had deal with both CNAME and A Records for Blogger, most large American registrars make this process easy. I suppose these particular registrars don't deal much with Google Blogger - but hopefully that will be useful to anybody setting up Blogger with a New Zealand or Australian registrar!