How can a crappy site with boring games waste more space?
To clear up some things that seem contradictory between my “public employee apology” and my recent “OUS is ripping us off” posts, I offer a few bullet points.
But first, check out what software engineers get paid to understand why I feel OUS underpays us. The general IT positions are even lower, of course, but I don’t have as much of a frame of reference for those pay scales vs. the private sector. Continue reading “Clarification about the unions”
Two years ago I went on a rant about how unions aren’t demanding as much as the public sometimes perceives they are. Now, after seeing the IT world of the Oregon University System (I’ve worked in two of the universities over the past three years), I have to say the union pay structure is indeed crap, even with the benefits. Continue reading “OUS vs. SEIU 2013”
At my lovely new job, we got a trainer to teach us about Ruby, Rails, and agile methodologies. She was pretty good overall, but one thing she mentioned a few times really got on my nerves: “use implicit returns in Ruby because there is a performance hit when explicitly returning”. Continue reading “The horrible cost of using explicit returns in Ruby….”
I suspect there are still some bugs, as I only have one bot I use to test the thing, but there’s a lot of really good new stuff. I’m trying to move everything that makes sense into github, so the changelog is available on the Net::YAIL github wiki. Highlights: there’s finally a topic-change event, you can now register a block as a handler, some core issues are fixed in parsing, and I’ve paved the way for object-based handlers and filters. Continue reading “Ruby lovers rejoice! Net::YAIL 1.4.0 released!”
Finally, another exciting episode of NAME… THAT… DIMINISHING RETURNS FORMULA!!! Today we look at exponential decay and the convergent series, both of which are in my mind the only limit-based formula that should be considered for 99% of situations. Continue reading “Diminishing Returns in Game Design: Exponential Decay and Convergent Series”
Okay, first off, this was supposed to be up a good while ago, but a combination of real life and work got in the way far more effectively than I had planned. Anyway, today’s diminishing returns formula is roots. Continue reading “Diminishing Returns in Game Design: Roots and Negative Exponents”
For the first topic in programming a diminishing returns formula, I present: logarithms! Continue reading “Diminishing Returns in Game Design: The Logarithm”
Okay, first of all, what is this concept of “diminishing returns”? Put simply, “diminishing returns” is the concept of getting less out of some system the more times you put in a constant amount. In the real world, diminishing returns are all over the place. Take, for instance, your body’s tolerance to alcohol…. Continue reading “Diminishing Returns in Game Design”
As I’ve mentioned maybe once or twice before, I like myAutToExe a good deal. It’s great for tinkering around with AutoIt programs that have been “secured” by compiling to tokens. In some situations, being able to decompile these scripts is an absolute necessity Continue reading “myAutToExe and Ruby for the win!”
After posting my super-deluxe-awesome-sexy actionscript hover tooltip code, I felt dirty. I mean, me, giving away the source code to something that I could surely have sold for at least $1.50 a shot! It was really disgusting to see such charity from the likes of myself. Continue reading “IRC in Ruby still sucks? Check out Net::YAIL, the choice of a new generation”