Looking back at Beggar Prince

I always wanted to make video games when I was a kid. My friends and I designed RPG board games using notebooks and graphing tools. I learned more about programming in high school, and mistakenly selected it as my first university major.

A major in programming does nothing to prepare you for making games, and nearly every graduate dreaming of being paid to make games never gets to.

It was by sheer accident I ended up being called to work on a game—and I’m sure that chaps the collective asses of many would-have-been-colleagues.

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Beijing police have problem with … “Sarks”?

If you live in southeast Beijing and spend all your time staring at graffiti like I do, you may be wondering who the “Sarks” are. They seem to have claimed a wide area including playgrounds, video arcades and hotels.

Is this one a coincidence or spelling error?

“Sarks” sightings:

I’m still waiting to meet Frank.

Frank’s in the backyard of the game arcade, thinking about peace and love.

Portfolio done, opinions?

Photo selection is finished and up. Clips and page designs are up. Still have to work out my rates for freelance editing.

http://derricksobodash.com/

Let me know what you think of it so far. I tried to keep it as minimalist as possible so lazy HR people with ADD will be able to see everything.

I highly recommend not disabling Javascript. This is a portfolio, and that means it is requires a visual medium. I’ll leave the resume-only pages to Gopherspace …

Help me narrow down my photos

Everyone likes to express his opinion, so here’s your chance.

I am attempting to whittle down some of the last three years of photos to prepare a selection for my potfolio. This is not easy, because I have a lot of photos.

Here’s your chance to tell me what you think sucks and what you think rocks. You don’t need to be a professional photographer, because professional photographers are usually not hiring photographers. I am looking for man-on-the-street feedback.

However, I do have a few guidelines. Selections should be interesting, or should have some impact. Don’t simply pick pretty colors, and don’t be caught up in HDR where it is used. Especially if a picture uses HDR (such as those in my HDR set), consider whether the use of HDR really makes it a better picture.

You can look through what I shortlisted at www.flickr.com/photos/dsobodash/sets/72157614832630128/.

Please select 10 to 20 photos you like. You can either reply to the photos on Flickr, or send me a list of Flickr photo IDs. If you look in your URL bar while viewing a photo, you will see:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsobodash/3021835268/

That number in bold is the photo’s ID number. Please submit only that piece. If you give the photo names or try to describe them, it could be difficult to find. You can either reply to this post with your list or mail it to derrick (at) cinnamonpirate (circle thingy) com.

Thank you for your time and effort.

You are all poor, stupid teenage parents

Earlier today I learned about Quantcast, a Web site which claims to profile not simply how much traffic a domain attracts, but the faces behind those hits.

The verdict is in: you, dear reader, are most likely a 12-17-year-old Asian male with a 6-year-old child and no college experience who works at a McJob for $0-$30,000 per year before taxes.

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Help me find CC-licensed art

Greetings! Regular readers may remember that some months ago I announced my plan to typeset some free books published by Project Gutenberg. I intended to have the first volume of Arabian Nights out by now, but things fell behind schedule and there were too many layout changes.

More importantly, I have learned much about book design—especially how much I did not know! It is such a specialized and often-neglected area of design, and consequentially most books do not cover it.

The Internet has been a tremendous help in providing classical diagrams and the theory abandoned by mass market paperbacks, and I have made tremendous progress on this project.

While Arabian Nights is still planned, first I would like to focus on the fairytale collections by Andrew Lang. The first two books I will work on will be his Blue Fairy and Red Fairy books, both fantastic collections that are usually passed over in favor of the more popular Grimm Brothers’ tales.

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Ubuntu ate a frisbee

Apparently I did something that Ubuntu really, really did not like. currently any GTK application that displays text will segfault. I think that includes just about … everything.

Thunar can run, but right clicking anything to view its properties causes a segfault.

I’m currently in the process of doing backups from the command line. I’d kind of like to install a dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu environment this time so that I can have a faster machine for Quark. An EeePC can run it, but it is painfully slow at times and the resolution leaves much to be desired. I used to run it in VirtualBox but got sick of the crashing.

Who knows, maybe I’ll throw on Windows for a change until the next Ubuntu release comes out. I need to figure out how to install Windows without a bootable CD-ROM or floppy device anyway.

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Motivation comes up short

Lately, I’ve been finding it impossibly difficult to sit down and write anything. First there was the buzz of the Beijing Olympics, then getting Lulu her visa to the US, then the ceremonial changing of the employee at work and now we’re into Paralympics reporting.

Sometimes things just don’t slow down.

I should have more to write about. I should have lots to say. Why yesterday, there was the perfectly funny story of how the chain on my bicycle snapped while biking along the highway, causing my foot to shoot down and my sandal to go flying through the air into the left lane. I had to backtrack, wait for the light to change, then keep up with the people coming off their right turns to move into the left lane, lean to the left, stick out my leg and hook the sandals with my toe.

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On getting old

After getting my little EeePC updated safely to the infamous -18 kernel for Hardy, I decided to perform a similar upgrade on my main system. Unfortunately, Ubuntu ate a Frisbee.

It segfaulted on every boot: even when booting the previously working kernel in recovery mode.

I was seconds from switching to Debian.

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Delays, delays …

I apologize for the lack of updates lately: the queue of things to get up is growing disgusting.

Just to give you and idea what is coming:

• Review of C&E’s Fengshen Bang game for the Famicom, complete with a personally tagged NSFE set.
• Several packages of PCF fonts for Linux, each including BDF descriptors. Includes over 100 fonts from DOS font TSR programs, video games and BIOS rips of old PC hardware. Perfect for an xterm font on an EeePC.
• A couple short stories not at all based on real life events … One is written and needs editing, the other is in my head and needs writing.
• A Python version of WineLocale with a better GUI. The package builder is already confirmed as working and will add all fonts and locales needed to your machine straight from apt — meaning no more dependency on Vera Sans YuanTi!
• An updated version of DerEditor with all the latest data ElSallia.com user Markliujy kindly helped track down. This includes class changes and class graphics, spell stats, terrain bonuses and penalties for each class and the ability to edit item prices. Also a new wide GUI layout to make sure the bottom is not cut off in low resolutions.

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