R. Bemrose

So, I started playing this recently. I beat the first chapters just the other day... then promptly overwrote my Chapter End save file when I started one of the other chapters.

Whoops.

I kinda need that for when the last chapters come out in September.

So, today our new build process was set up for the main project I'm assigned to.

For those of you programmers out there, it uses Maven and Hudson. Hudson is set up to do integration testing using a subversion post-commit hook.

None of this is too out of the ordinary for Java.

The "best" part is that, even though we could just use Maven to build things on the server side, we're going to also use it on the development side. And that's where the problems start.

We use Eclipse as our IDE. Eclipse's Maven support is practically non-exiseant. Due to this, the contractors decided to go with the maven-eclipse plugin for Maven instead.

Big problem: the maven-eclipse plugin is a terrible, half-ass piece of shit that needs to die in a fire. It generates "generic" projects unless you do lots of extra configuration to make a Dynamic Web Project. And even then, it still doesn't support Enterprise Application Projects, which up until yesterday, was how we deployed things to our test environment.

In other words, I lost my two-click deployment.

Now, I have to manually run Maven from the command line, then load the oc4j console that listens on port 8888 (side note: I can launch oc4j from inside Eclipse or through a batch file). Which dies with a Java OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space if you try to Redeploy the existing application.

Needless to say, I'm fairly pissed off at this. Rather than having one problem (having to manually deploy to the QA server), we now have... 5? 6?

What we gained:
+ Automatic deployment to QA
- A lot of headaches from the way Maven does things

What we lost:
- Automatic deployment to Test (which happens considerably more often than to QA)
- Time, lots of it
- An actual working test environment


I'm actually tempted to deploy straight to QA, since I can have Hudson do that far, FAR, FAR easier than I can deploy it to my own machine. And yes, that is a gigantic WTF.

So, the Secret of Monkey Island remake comes out today on Steam (and probably Xbox Live Arcade). To give you an idea of how much has changed in it, the game went from a 4.35 MB game (that's the size of the 256-color diskette version, the CD version is probably smaller file-size wise, because it used CD tracks for music) to a 2,160 MB game for the remake.

Better yet, unlike Tales of Monkey Island, they have all the Curse of Monkey Island voice actors.

Well, I haven't heard Stan's voice yet, but they have all the other majors ones: Guybrush, Elaine, LeChuck, and the Voodoo Lady.

Edit:
I also entered TellTale's "Game Designer For A Day" contest... the goal being to create a line about how Guybrush wronged you in some way.

My entry is "He broke into my home and stole everything he could fit in his pants!"

A reference to RPGs and Adventure games in general, and Guybrush specifically. ;)

So, vote for me for Governor. When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice!

Apparently... Wells-Fargo bank is currently... suing itself... over a condominium in Florida.

In a sort-of-scary bit of News, Google has announced its intention to create a new PC OS.

Known as Google Chrome OS, it will be a Linux kernel with a new windowing system built on top of it.

Of course, Google intends to use this to push its web applications hard, because Google has said nothing about native applications... implying that you can't actually create a native windowed app for Chrome OS, but only access web apps.

Yesterday: New Microsoft Internet Explorer exploit in the wild

Now, we have one week before the next Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Will they roll out a fix before then?

Surprisingly, McAfee is saying that IE7 on Vista/7 isn't affected because of the sandbox it runs in. Still, I feel safer not using it.

P.S. doctorzaius, this post is aimed at you.

So, LucasArts announced (PDF) earlier today that it's releasing some of its old game catalog on Steam.

The first games will hit Steam on Wednesday, July 8th and include:

• Armed and Dangerous™
  
• Indiana Jones® and the Fate of Atlantis
  
• Indiana Jones® and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
  
• LEGO® Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure
  
• LOOM™
  
• Star Wars Battlefront® II
  
• Star Wars Republic Commando®
  
• Star Wars Starfighter™
  
• The Dig®
  
• Thrillville®: Off the Rails™
  

It'll be interesting to see if some of these use ScummVM.

Not only that, but this also answers how they're distributing the PC version of the remastered Secret of Monkey Island when it comes out on July 15th.

If you try to upgrade Firefox 3.0.x to Firefox 3.5 and have the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installed, you're going to get an error about this plugin not being compatible with Firefox 3.5

Luckily, there is an update that fixes this and also enables the Uninstall button.

Why MS couldn't just push this update down Windows Update, I have no idea.

Also, if you have Firebug, versions 1.4 beta and 1.5 alpha work with Firefox 3.5.

This isn't your father's Homestar Runner Email!

So, I heard on the radio on the way back from work that Michael Jackson died.

It's a shame... he defined pop music in the 1980s, even if his more recent stuff sucks.

Seriously, is there even one person over the age of 25 who doesn't know Thriller or Beat It?

So, I was at work today, trying to debug a problem with a JCS cache not being initialized. Google wasn't being any help.

So, on a whim, I decided to ignore the documentation's practice of putting the part after the = sign in the configuration and switch them all to single lines.

And this fixed the problem.

So, what does this have to do with the title? Simple: English Majors: Don't apply formatting rules to code because you just might break it!

For reference, the JCS pages use the performatted text tag for examples. This means the line breaks are in the actual page source, not added automatically by HTML.

Well, ABC finally aired the last episode of Pushing Daisies in the US yesterday.

The episode's ending seemed somewhat tacked on... like they were trying to resolve several outstanding plot points at the last second in an attempt to bring some closure to the series.

I'm not sure how, but Telltale Games managed to get the rights to make a Monkey Island series.

Tales of Monkey Island is a 5 episode episodic game series, with the first episode coming out in July.

Oh, but that's not all.

LucasArts is remaking Secret of Monkey Island as Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.

I ran into a great quote while looking through the Unix Hater's Handbook:

"People vote for president more often than they read printed documentation."

It's almost time to go home on a Friday, what can I say?

So... turns out that TF2 weapons will eventually be tradeable. Or so says the TF2 blog.

Also, hats are coming soon. Here's an ad for them on... Day 9 of the Sniper vs. Spy update.

Yes, I'm serious, there's a bonus day thing a day after the actual update.

I found out something interesting today. If you have jQuery loaded, it overloads the javascript Array type object to add a method remove().

Of course, Javascript is so smart that it includes remove when you do this:

for (var i in jsArray) {
    // Runs once for each element
    // ...plus one if jQuery is loaded
}

Whoops. Unfortunately, this means that I now have to double my logic, because while for.. in still works fine for Objects while jQuery is loaded, I need a for loop for Arrays.

Spies got a major upgrade this patch. If you play Team Fortress 2 for the PC, PAY ATTENTION!

In addition to the (random-acquired) unlockables, they've had a few buffs:
Spies disguised as enemy spies now get a random mask to help complete the disguise, and their target id will be set appropriately
Spies disguised as medics now have an Ubercharge: line in their disguise target info
Spies outward facing "disguise health" now matches their disguise target when they first apply the disguise
Spies can now pick up health kits for their "disguise health", even when uninjured
Spies that disguise as a player using an unlockable now show that unlockable in hand
Spies can now use enemy teleporters
Spies can now see who they're disguised as

There was also one bugfix:
Spies disguised as an enemy can no longer see the nameplates of cloaked enemy spies when mousing over them

This fixes a number of longstanding Spy issues that made the Medic and Spy disguises useless, as well as made the whole thing more realistic.

Oh, one more thing.

Weapon unlocks are now completely random and not awarded for getting achievements.

I saw a funny quote about Lost today:

"The meandering plot arcs of Lost all make sense when you realize that in the series finale they find Gilligan."

Here at work, we have a large project that uses a large amount of Javascript.

We literally have (Java) JSP pages that are nearly 3000 lines long and output HTML several hundred to thousand lines longer than that.

That's not the half of it though. We literally have forms that are constructed from HTML that exists hidden in the page that we clone into the DOM, populating it with data from the database via AJAX calls.

This is, quite literally, the worst website I've ever had to work on. That's saying something, considering how old and horrid VGMusic's Perl code was (is).

AJAX is fine for simple operations. However, it is possible to go overboard, such as populating forms that use tables nested 3+ rows deep and requiring that we write our own jQuery templating plugin to do it.

Edit: Me and my big mouth. After trying to figure out the best way to change the IDs on a 11x64 table, I've been asked to update the templater plugin to do it. GAH!

So, the TF2 Sniper/Spy Update is, according to rumors, set to land on the 21st... Thursday.

It'll be interesting seeing how easy it is to get the Spy unlocks for me. I'm not going to say I'm perfect as a Spy, but I'm normally really good at it.

When I actually play Spy, I'm going to make a wild guess and say I'll have the first two unlocks the first night I play Spy after the patch.

Unfortunately, Valve hasn't released what you need to get each achievement... only their names, so this is just wild speculation.