It's no secret I'm not a fan of the way Microsoft is handling Windows 8.  So how could they have done it? First, simplify/unify the underlying platform in a way that developers can feel confident that they're not going to get screwed over again (That Silverlight knowledge in my brain is going to be stored right with my OS/2 SOM storage). That means .NET .NET .NET.  You make sure that if you write for .NET 4.5 that it'll work on any Windows 8 target.  I don...

I’ve had JoeUser.com as my home but with two differnet IDs (draginol and frogboy) so thoroughly conflicted at this stage, I thought it would make sense to set up a site that combines them. My articles still get posted on all the Stardock sites (you might be reading this on JoeUser or WinCustomize or Sins of a Solar Empire. Who knows.  But now you can find all my stuff together at www.littletinyfrogs.com .

Supposed to be pretty good actually.

Came up with a bunch of good names for future games --- so good that they were already taken, somewhere at some time. And because we’re such a litigious society, people will sue over even partial names. I remember getting a threatening letter because we had a technology in Galactic Civilizations II called “Space Marines” and that they had a trademark on that name. We renamed it to Stellar Marines (sounds better anyway). In recent times, companies have had to resort with coming up ...

Playing around with that this evening.  Trying to migrate from my 2010 Mac Pro. Taking a lot longer than I’d like. I also have a ThinkPad X1-carbon on the way. I’ll let you know how that goes when I get it.

This past year I had a 20KW solar array put in. For the month of July my electrical bill looked like this: To translate this, my house uses a lot of juice, especially in the Summer months (air conditioning and such).  I’m not proud of the power use. But in essence, the solar array covered 2,685KWh of electrical use. Plus, I had an excess of 640KWh. The DTE program (heavily subsidized by the government) pays me for the energy I produce so I end up with a...

I'm impressed. I can blog to the stardock ecosystem with the iPhone app Blog Writer. I just use my forum user Id and pw with the metaweblog URL: https://www.joeuser.com/api/MetaWeblog.axd

I discovered something interesting. Unless I’m mistaken, large address aware 32-bit games may be able access up to 8TB of memory.  I don’t know what tricks the OS is using to do this (a 32-bit process should only be able to see 4GB) but a cursory look indicates when running on 64-bit version of Windows 8, a 32-bit process that is using large address aware is “seeing” 8TB. Take that with a grain of salt since my guys are skeptical about whether you can actually use any of that.  ...

If you have Windows 8 and you’re finding it annoying to get around the desktop, you can download Tiles (it’s free). This has been a life saver for me as it lets me quickly get to the things I want to and manage them as such. It’s also completely compatible with the charms bar and the Metro (Modern UI) experience.  

I originally wrote this on Qt3 but I think this might be helpful to others who are wondering about the effects of working long hours. Here are my views on the matter: I think with most people, 55 to 60 hours a week is about the maximum before they start to eat up stored health/sanity points. And even there, over time, you will start to suffer burn-out -- the rate depends on how much you enjoy what you’re working on. But sooner or later, it’ll catch up on you. Up until last ye...

I’ve been working on the AI this weekend and making a few proposed balancing changes. For one thing, I moved the tougher monsters away further from starting locations and murdered the remaining “Uhh” sound effects that make me cry the tears of a thousand rains every time I hear them (I get dehydrated a lot). I’m making my own faction The Drengin Empire are back, baby! I’m not above gaming the system until Kael notices this. I should probably tell him that you can co...

Guys like me aren’t supposed to get “rich”. When you look at the most successful (or rich) people in the tech industry they usually have remarkably similar backgrounds. By contrast, guys like me are supposed to be relegated to some back lab coding drivers.  That was, when I was in college, the dream.  Of course, that dream didn’t come true because I couldn’t afford college and had to work multiple jobs at once to pay for school. I discovered that the best way to make money was to ...

Real-time game streaming service, OnLive was a phenomenon when it debuted a couple years ago.  I think my precise opinion of it was “It’s doomed”.  More nuanced comments can be found here: http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/03/25/stardock-ceo-speaks-about-onlive/ My opinion hasn’t changed on it even though it is a marvelous technology. I was hoping they’d got bought out or something to be incorporated as part of a larger solution. See more here: http://mashable.com/2012...

The more well known you are, the less control one has over the narrative. That’s why those who try to “leak” things to the media or try to manipulate the media narrative are playing with fire.  Most situations situations are fairly boring. Boring doesn’t generate page views. As a result, there is a tendency to spice those headlines up. Brad: The Narrative To use myself as an example, here are some facts vs. narratives I’ve read. Issue Narrative ...