Many software developers are familiar with the concept of method overloading in the popular languages, C#, Java, etc. So as a Software Developer I had assumed that JavaScript had Method Overloading as well. However in reality it does not. JavaScript will appear to support Overloading in that it won’t give you any syntax errors at all when two methods with the same name are defined but when executed only the last script defined will execute. This is very annoying as I spent quite a while trying to debug my program of this error and it is a concept that one would assume would be in every language, even scripting. So as a parting word: “Beware Javascript!”
Chocolate Covered Bacon!
Chocolate covered bacon is something that I definitely made up before I knew it has actually been done, much less commercially. I even talked to many colleagues about this idea and the majority of them thought that it was a completely crazy idea. I had never realized that this was actually a real product until toady. Please welcome the entry of Chocolate Covered Bacon! (link) I will now be trying to make some chocolate covered bacon.
Glassfish, JNDI, and Hibernate
Using Hibernate with JNDI and Glassfish is a topic that I have researched and I never found a very concrete way of doing things, it was a lot of trial and error on my part, but I came out of it a better man. Now I want to share my knowledge with you! In other words I have written a small article on what I know about this subject that can be found here.
Design Document Crap!
I am currently in my fourth semester at SAIT in Alberta studying Information Technology: Software Development. This course has a unique aspect in that at the end of the course (fourth semester) the students are required to partner with industry and develop a software project according to their needs. I love this idea and I am really excited to work on it, however, the way they go about the courses is very odd. When we designed the project last semester we didn’t even know the structure of the type of system we were creating!
Basically our system included a database connected to java which was then turned into jsp pages and servlets. We never learned how to use jsp or servlets in the third semester which left us hanging and unsure about our design. We are finally learning jsp in the fourth semester, but its a little late. Anyways, I would have much preferred to have the introductory web course we did in third semester to be pushed down to second semester and had the course we are doing in fourth semester pushed down to the third semester so that we actually know what the stink we were doing!
Black Ops and the Blatent Money Grab!
The majority of the population has probably heard of this new phenomenon “Call of Duty” and most likely of the new version that just came out “Black Ops.” To me this is such a sick grab for people’s cash. Seriously it almost makes me sick. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released in November of 2009, just a year later in the same franchise Call of Duty: Black Ops was released in November of 2010. Only one year?!?
I remember when games were good and had a lifetime of 3 to 5 years. This is what I would consider a good game: one that doesn’t need to re-release itself every year in order to keep people happy. A good game shouldn’t need to do that, it should be able to hold interest for three to five years before going under as an outdated game. This brings me to another point, “Good Games,” we as consumers have been so adjusted to games like this that we think that they are “good,” in fact we say that they are the best game of the decade! Well not me, I don’t support this stupid franchise, I have played my share of Call of Duty games and each iteration of the game got worse and worse. On release Black Ops was terribly buggy, spawn positions were way off, at times you were spawned in the enemy’s front line!
To top it all off, Treyarch, the developing company of Black Ops, had the entire thing pretty much built for them since they just bum off of Activision’s game engine. If you were to compare Modern Warfare 2 with Black Ops graphics there would be not a whole lot of difference. In fact from what I have seen the graphics are worse off in Black Ops. Treyarch has given some thought into the multiplayer gameplay and have made some good changes. But its not worth it for me to be paying 60 bucks for something labeled as a Complete Game where in reality its simply an expansion pack for Modern Warefare 2. Same graphics (ish), different storyline, mostly the same gameplay. The game is only worth 30 bucks at most!
This link below triggered this burst of ranting, basically the gist is that Black Ops has now gained 1 billion dollars in sales since its release. This disgusts me most because it is only encouraging poorly developed games to be release prematurely and without cause.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/cod-black-ops-call-duty,news-9489.html
Zune HD
So I purchased a Zune HD media player, the player itself is really cool, I did a lot of research before hand and I definately liked the Zune HD rather than an Ipod Touch. Call me a sinner but I’d prefer not to buy apple products if I can.
But here’s the problem, I’d a software developer, and I’d like to be able to develop for my mobile devices. This is one of the reasons I bought the Zune HD, likewise my next phone upgrade will most likely be to an android phone. However, after I got my Zune HD, I looked further into developing for it and the language and development platform used for it.
Here’s where it gets dicey, the language that Microsoft has designated for the platform is the same as what the Xbox 360 uses. This means that I cannot use any internet calls ……….. I’ll let that sink in for a moment ………… this means that I have absolutely no internet access for any of my apps! No accessing email, networking capability for developing games, no ability to access the internet or wi-fi at all!
Fortunately I found an alternative language, unfortunately it is a hack of the Zune HD software. This language is called OpenZDK which is fine in itself, unfortunately there is not a lot of tutorials on the language. I normally learn best by reading a book on the subject but there is probably not any books on the subject.
So I’m left in a bind, if anyone has any sort of tutorial or know of any books then please let me know.