Weekend

Interesting weekend, even though (especially in contrast to the previous two weekends) I didn't really get out much.

Not too long ago at some dictator555-orchestrated event, new-to-town xartofnothingx offered to loan us some of her Google Ad-wrangling expertise. So Saturday afternoon we all sat down around 1 Volity Towers' fabulous oak conference table and I pressed the button that dimmed the candelabra and lowered the 20-foot Internets screen so that we could go over it together. As predicted it was mostly a conversation between her and daerr coz it's not like Zarf or I know anything about this stuff.

After doing lots of keyword tuning, we modified the website to let Google catch Gamut downloads. If we set everything up right, we should be able to tell how many people who see our ads end up not just clicking on them but going all the way to installing our software. Looking forward to seeing what those numbers look like in another week or so.

Other than that I set up all the Jmac's Arcade stuff. And I wanted to make a second episode about Asteroids, except that my making-movies-from-what's-happening-on-the-screen software can't capture it! MacMAME's vector-graphics emulation pegs the CPU (even though it's a G5), and running 10-fps screen-capture on top of that just kills everything. I am bummed.

Wrote the output part of the ledger-display component. This is what you will look at when you want to see a report on the credits you've earned with your games, and from whom, or a report on how you've been spending your credits.

Tonight I got a burst of energy for a strange reason because I almost took a random opportunity to meet a couple of new friends-of-a-friend. Due to a benign miscue I ended up not being able to go, but for some reason the fact I almost did made me go wheeeee for like two hours after. Huh?! Yeah I dunno. I guess with all of everything going on I'm feeling socially adventurous again, as socially adventurous as I am able to get, anyway. Well, good.

Then I cleaned up Whitey, the old iBook, which is to say I attacked it with fingernail and Brillo pad until its lid was (almost) clean of stickers. I have moved past being the sort of person who has a sticker-covered latoptop, I suppose. I chose, however, to leave the Jim's Big Ego vinyl sticker that cthulhia gave me a long time ago. For some reason, advertising local geekish folkrock is still within the bounds.

There also remains a little grinning bat inside, over the screen, a memoir of the time when doctor_atomic was a housemate. And there's an extremely deteriorated Tirade sticker on the bottom, probably from a Looney Labs order from early 2002 or thenabouts.

The only thing I didn't hit on today's to-do list was fixing the toys on jmac.org, which have been broken for god knows how long, probably since I switched servers last year. How embarrassing! The toys, mostly stuff that all dates pre-2002, really serves no purpose other than impressing people exploring my site for the first time, but that's a pretty good reason by itself to keep them propped up. I'll have to get to that this week.

UI nit

Youtube is correct to stick a big fat ">"-shaped play button in the middle of their embedded player, and then make the entire player clickable on top of that - no matter where you click, it plays the video. Which is fine, since what else would you want to do with it?

I use Google Video instead of Youtube for several reasons, but I am sad that the sole interactive parts of their own embedded player, on initial load, are a wee play button down in one corner and a link to the Google Video main page in another. I am concerned that when people mouse over the still and see their cursor remain pointer-shaped, they assume it's just a screenshot and not an actual movie player. So I feel obligated to note in nearby text that you can click the play button right here on this very page, and I still worry that people will miss it.

What I'd also really like is a way to tell Google Video which frame I'd like to use as a representative still. Maybe there is a way? I don't know.

Year 6 since Abduction

Sometime around now is my five-year anniversary with Livejournal. I set it up at the start of September with the usual "yeah I don't plan on posting here very often I just want to keep up with my friends" message, and then dived in with earnest a few weeks later after jmac.org got compromised.

I should go port my early-2001 jmac.org weblog over here, sometime.

Just so I stop pasting it in IM at everyone

This image of someone's attempt to make Super Mario look realistic is NSFW for being hilarious (if you're me) but disgusting. http://www.recabcomputronix.net/supermario.jpg

Update As popecrunch points out, it is by Handre De Jager.