Category: private

An interesting video led me to try the speaker's idea for Game of Life. That led me to a very strange thought. And I'm not even stoned. Also: Love one another.

I fully expect to fail this morning: I don't see how to do what I need to do. I'll try to fail in a way that sets me up for a win sometime soon.

I am thinking here about extractive capitalism, about chronic disease, about climate and weather, about Dark Agile, about racial and class prejudice, and about whatever's troublin' you, bunkie.

A meandering trip through changes that didn't matter until the problem finally became clear to me. A timing bug, one might call it.

My videos are not visible to all browsers and hardware and operating systems. Here are a few different views. If you care to, please let me know which work for you. Details within.

IGNORE: The project is changing direction. I'm already ticked off and now I have to try to set up libGDX, our new graphics base. I expect things not to go well. Honestly, I'm not even hopeful.

Notes on making Jekyll work

Some thoughts from Twitter on 'technical debt', what it is, what it isn't, and why we avoid it.

blurb

Some personal setbacks have, well, set me back. I think today I'll play with food and eating. Back to 3D later.

Bit of a shift today. This is a post-hoc report rather than contemporaneous.

Here on day 3, I think I'll experiment with adding an element to the entity screen with the robot, with an eye to first having it be independent, and then making it a child of the robot, to see if it'll turn with him.

Second day of sorting Codea Craft. I’m not sure which direction to go. For now, forward, I guess.

My Customer (me) thinks it would be good if our. Braitenberg-like vehicles could run and display themselves in 3D. Codea has a capability called Craft that looks promising. Let’s look into it.

I’ve decided to defer cleaning up the old Braitenberg / Codea articles, and instead I’m going to look at the current version of the program and see how we might go forward.

Should this be here? I’m playing in Codea with ‘Braitenberg Vehicles’, just for fun. I’ll be sharing what I do with you all.

After a month away from the code, I review and wonder, as one often does, 'What were you thinking?'

images

An improvement in wall avoidance is thwarted by an undetected null object.

An ambitious goal turns out just about the way you'd expect.

Let's try to avoid the walls. And we'll discover a need for a bit more generality. Not too much, I hope ...

Notes on early use of AWS. Not really organized for publication but wants preservation.

We all need something to hold on to. It's interesting how it affects our thinking.

Scrum people have been telling me for years that Scrum isn't a software development framework. I should have believed them.

An Approach to 'Agile' based on the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto.

not supposed to be read.

Scrum requires a backlog. Backlogs are evil. Therefore Scrum is evil. Calm your um self. Let's look into this.

Let's try making our learning tests more clear, and maybe drive out some methods for an FTP-like object.

Reflections on the state of Agile Software Develoopment, Scrum, and other methods.

Here's Thursday's Code, just in case you want to see it.

Notes on what was required setting up the naked iMac.

Kate Oneal

We make the ships look different, and give them visible thrust.

We refactor the code that supports the tuning parameters, and change missiles to allow rapid fire.

As we add more ability to adjust system values, we find some design improvements that need to be made.

Having played the game, we've found some adjustments that we'd like to make. Let's put in some controls so that we can adjust things.

We play the game a bit to get a sense of what it needs to be a decent game. We need some adjustable controls for tuning.

A list of topics we might want to work on.

There will be some pairing today. I'm of a mind to work on damage.

Tomorrow Tozier will be here. Today I want to reflect on what has gone before and whether there are things to learn. I sure hope there are.

It has been nearly a week since we worked on the game. Today, with fresh eyes and teas, we take a look at the collision logic, which kills everyone twice.

Tozier is late this morning, so I've sketched up some better ship fragments.

A wild tozier has appeared. Let's plan some work and then do it.

Completing the move to the Universe.

Today I am broadcasting from BMW of Ann Arbor, where they are checking my car's fluid balance or something. I'm stuck here for a while and I plan to expand the Universe class started yesterday.

I've been wanting to create a universe. Haven't you always wanted to create a universe?

The collision logic, short as it is, has shown itself to be too weird. Not only is it implicated in an obscure Codea exception, but it isn't even doing what we intended.

We give a little thought to playability and raise some issues.

Missiles kill the one who fires them. While this might be seen as Karma in action, it makes for a dull game. We'll fix that and see about making an explosion.

Our missiles can die, sort of, but they are harmless. The game needs more violence!

Will game play improve if the missiles can shoot down the ships? The answer will not surprise you.

This game isn't going to be much fun if all you can do is fly around taunting each other. Let's start adding missiles.

Scrum says we should have a Backlog. Should we have a Backlog?

Today, Tozier is with me, and I believe we'll continue working on the controls.

Today, I think I'll do a bit of work on adding controls into the game.

Let's try to figure out how CodeaUnit works. I'm sure it'll be educational.

Even though I have no pair today, I decide to work on 'production' code. We'll see how that goes.

Alone again, naturally, I decide to use CodeaUnit, instead of our hand-rolled micro-framework, in the real project.

I'm all alone at the bookstore today, and decide to take a look at the delightful CodeaUnit project.

Our current approach to TDD tests is a bit weak. I think we'll work toward evolving a testing framwork for a while. Spoiler Alert: for a while.

Today, for something to do, I'll refactor our existing tests into the new format where we pass in the assert functions.

Our mission today, and we have decided to accept it, is to work on creating a set of controls for each ship, so that we can drive them around.

A short note on code manaagement

Remember when I told you we were using very little testing and I'd tell you if we got in trouble? Well, today is that day.

Maybe it doesn't matter whether the button talks to the ship or the ship talks to the button. Right now we need to make the darn things work right.

Today we'll do some more work on controls. In particular, who says what to whom, and when?

It's time for a bit of looking back. We have a lot of questions, let's see what we can figure out.

The game won't be much fun if you can't drive the ships around. Controls are likely to be tricky, so we'll do some experimentation.

Today we plan to remove some of the ship-related duplication by creating a Ship class.

Today we think we need to learn a bit about what flying two ships will entail. Duplication, probably.

It's time to see whether we can make this ship move. We'll apply a little acceleration and see what happens.

I'm working on an homage to the old PDP-1 game, Spacewar!, in that way that I have. Might turn into a book.

In which I start from scratch and wonder whether I'll need much testing. What's your bet?

I'm working on an homage to the old PDP-1 game, Spacewar!, in that way that I have. Might turn into a book.

Yes, you're certainly a better programmer than I am. Here's why.

Some further thoughts that I wanted to share. Revised based on an unfortunate series of events.

This little paperback was handed out at the Agile conference this year. I've just started to read it. It has ticked me off before opening it. So far, so good.

ipad thing

In which we search for common ground and disputed ground.

In which we see some agreement and try to turn away from the construction metaphor.

Inspired by 'All Tomorrow's Parties', by William Gibson.

Some thoughts on bias.

Packing the Chris Reeve Knife

Here are some things on my shelves. Pictures mostly here because I may try to sell some of these items. If you're interested, contact me.

Article regarding a proposed approach to education for the Scrum Alliance.

Imagine that a supposedly Agile organization hired a new CEO. What are some things the CEO wouldn't do?

Central to Effective Software Development

What would you like to be doing? Part 1045.

more of the same

I wanted to collect all the pictures from Nature into a folder, and did it without TDD. Am I a bad person?

Ideas for a Scrum book.

Experiments for testing CSS and such

Things I might write about

Perhaps you appreciate what I do here and would like to help out. Here are some ways you can do that.

The Nature of Software Development touches on estimation along its flow. Let's drill in a bit.

First batch of problem cards the KALE group created

The KALE group's initial affinity grouping

All the KALE cards

The business purpose cards after second refinement.

Estimating stories is a core element of many organizations' approach to Scrum. What's up with that?

The first brainstorming cards

Estimating stories is a core element of many organizations' approach to Scrum. What's up with that?

Estimating stories is a core element of many organizations' approach to Scrum. What's up with that?

This is the 404 page

Tell me if this doesn't work on your screen, please.

Fake Kate Oneal article here for testing.

Things in the skills development area have changed in some interesting ways. We have room for a few more people who want tocontribute to our proposed session in Ann Arbor.

obsolete

Somewhat political rant.

People in Kate Oneal stories

IEEE Software will be publishing a special issue on Test-Driven Development, in the May/June 2007 issue. The issue will be edited by Grigori Melnik and yours truly. We would love to consider your paper for inclusion in this issue. Updated: We're now scheduled for the May/June issue.