I was recently working on a project which required me to be working on two different machines – my development machine, and the second local machine which had access to the remote server where I needed to deploy the changes. What this meant was that I would work on some code, then swivel in my chair to look at the other monitor with other keyboard/mouse, and either drag’n'drop the affected files to the remote server again or copy-then-paste the file again. 

The whole process is slightly annoying, but nothing too terrible. One of my coworkers and I were discussing a different matter the other day and I was working on this project while he and I talked. As he watched what I was doing he asked “Why don’t you just copy the file once again then just keep pasting it after you update it?” Um… because I didn’t know that would work? I suppose I should have, though. 

See, I know that when you typically move files in Windows you don’t REALLY “move” the data to a new location on the hard drive. The system merely grabs a reference to the file and then, in the case of a “move”, will merely flag where that data should now be logically accessed in your drive’s directory structure. But it doesn’t actually move the bits somewhere new. The same is true for copying from one location to another, whether the destination is on a local or remote machine over a network drive. If you “copy” the file, you will store the reference to the file’s location. If you paste, the system will at that time go get all data contained within the file and copy it to the new location. What this means is that you can keep changing the source location without having to re-copy it after every change – on each paste, Windows goes and grabs the full contents from the source before actually writing data to the new location. 

I guess you do learn something new every day.

sobees is the perfect desktop companion for online social networks. sobees offers an easy unified user experience to get, organize and share information from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, Flickr and Youtube directly on the desktop.

So ok, this sounds like a pretty cool application. Obviously the people that this software will appeal to is more than your average Facebooker, but let’s admit that over time as these sites have come out, a number of us have signed up for flickr accounts, have started “tweeting”, and are incessantly updating our status on Facebook (usually via our tweets) or otherwise stalking talking with our friends.

Enter my issues on computer number 1. After ensuring that I was up to date with the .NET Framework (v3.5 SP1 required), I install the program which takes an amazingly long time when compared to the relatively small file size of the install program. After finally installing, the taskbar shows the “sobee Login” window but… no window. Nothing, anywhere. I check behind other windows, I try to Minimize All (that trick sometimes reveals otherwise-hidden applications), nothing. I open Task Manager and find one application and one process running. If I try and “Switch To” the application, TaskMan minimizes itself. Oooookay. I write to their info@ email address which they indicate in their FAQ you should email if you have trouble – I got a fairly prompt response, the first of which was roughly “that’s strange – we are trying hard to clear up any and all bugs, but we’ve never heard of this one”. 15 minutes later I received a second reply stating they had released a new installer to the website which should solve my problem. Interesting. I uninstall, re-download, re-install (again, a painfully slow process; I’m really not sure what this installer does), and still have the same errors. Uninstall and give up.

Computer #2, running Vista. .NET Framework is up to date, download installer, install (still slow), woohoo I have a login screen! I sign in and am greeted with a bar which takes over the entire top of my monitor – which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if it had just resized the rest of the viewport for me. Having the application on top of my browser tabs in Chrome isn’t really what I would call convenient. That aside, I try and start configuring the connections to my social networks. The Facebook profile seems confused, as it only asks for my username but no password – same for Youtube. Friendfeed, stangely, does ask for both. Regardless as I try and connect with my profiles the entire program seized on itself and I had to mercy kill the application just so I could get my computer to respond again. Start the program up after checking TaskMan to ensure that no processes associated with sobees were running, and I get both the login screen AND a popup which warns another copy of the application is already running and the one I just tried to start would be shut down. Um, ok then. After logging back in, I try and set up my profiles again. Another seize, another TaskMan kill, and I’m back to reinstalling the application.

Unfortunate since the idea had a lot of promise, but wait – in my Googling I came across an application called 8hands. (Who knew there was a bona-fide market for cross-social-network applications?) From their website…

8hands is a service for the social networks users that want to always stay in the know but don’t want to waste too much time on checking their blogs and profiles. The 8hands Desktop application will organize all your social networks into one place and notify you upon new events.

Sounds pretty similar, so let’s give this one a go. Install goes well enough, and on starting the application I am asked for the account credentials to any of the networks I wish to connect to, any RSS feeds I want to subscribe to, etc. After entering it all the program enters a lengthy initial sync process – to paraphrase the message in the program, “Grabbing all your info – this could take a few minutes. Want a sandwich?” Once it was done I was connected and it began to pull data from messages and wall posts on my Facebook account, as well as comments on a YouTube video I had posted, from the past 30 days. I thought that was a little much (do I really need the last MONTH?) but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Then came to playing with the app. Admittedly my primary focus was on Facebook since that’s the “big one” in my opinion. It is really neat that you can see your friends from FB, and post to their walls right from the application. You can also post on your OWN wall from the application – do people actually do this? I comment on my own postings, but a wall post to yourself? That aside, everything seemed pretty slick other than missing out on some data from the main “Feed” page – I would get notifications in 8hands about some things but not others. Perhaps this has something to do with their supposedly-super-special-uber-cool-ultra-l337 algorithm which tells you specifically WHICH of your friends, across all of your networks, are your “best friends” who interact with you the most and you only get info on those people, but I didn’t play with the feature enough to find out. What I DID notice, however, was that certain things (like viewing more info on a particular friend) required me to actually go to FB in my browser – I could tell because I would click on a link in the program and suddenly my browser opened a new tab for the link.

The problem here is not the separation between the program and added functionality, but the fact that Facebook will log you out in one location if you log in from another. Let me elaborate… If you happen to be logged into Facebook in, say, Firefox, and then open 8hands, Facebook will say “hey, you just logged in somewhere else, I’m going to log out that first user”, which will render your session within Firefox moot. If you click on something in 8hands to go to Facebook, this means you will NEVER be logged in – unless you have “remember me” checked off, you are going to need to re-enter your credentials every time. The worst part is that while surfing Facebook, 8hands may cycle back around to ask Facebook once again if there any any updates that you should know about. Guess what happens in your browser when 8hands does this? Ding-ding-ding.

Overall I liked 8hands – certainly it was miles ahead of sobees in my opinion since I could actually get the program to run. (Also, 8hands continually spells their own name correctly on their website. I’m not one to make fun of people when English is not their first language, so I won’t pick on translation and grammar errors from the sobees crew: BUT, when you have “download sobess” on your own download page of your site? Poor form, guys) The interface in 8hands was a little more Instant-Messager-like, which was slightly more palatable than the “take over your machine” feeling I got from sobees, and any time a new update occurred in one of your networks you would see the small box pop up just above your system tray letting you know what was going on, just as if you’d received a new IM in MSN Messenger or new mail in Outlook. That said, it seems the concept is still just a little too unformed and the software just a little too early in its infancy for me to really recommend with any strength. It’s interesting to poke around in but for now I’ll stick with manually checking my sites, thanks.

I would be interested to see how the 8hands Mobile application works for cell phones, but alas my phone isn’t supported. Anyone out there feel like giving it a shot and letting me know what they think?

Another thing I felt that most tutorials lacked was the explanation that you should really, honestly, truly WATCH what you are doing when attempting to learn how to solve the cube. Personally, I don’t learn well by seeing R U R’ written down and say “oh, ok, no problem”. I need to see that move in action on the cube, and even if I don’t fully comprehend what exactly is happening, I can see what is happening which helps my brain remember what my hands should be doing so that my eyes see the same thing next time. 

I also ran into a few cases where the person explaining the solve either underestimated the person wanting to learn to solve the cube, or greatly overestimated them. “This algorithm should be real easy for you to learn, it’s only 18 moves long.” Oye. Or, the flip side of that coin was “Try this algorithm to do what you need to do next. Depending on the state of your cube you may need to do this 1, 3, 5, or 39 times in order to get the cube to look like what you want”. (I may have slightly exaggerated that, but the point stands). What I would prefer, myself, in a Beginner’s Method is to be given some basic instructions on what I should be looking to accomplish, what I should do in order to reach that goal, and be given not only an explanation of what is happening when I do that but also be presented with one or two alternatives saying “hey, if the first thing isn’t working for you, maybe this will help instead”. To me that seems like a fairly basic teaching method which would help a lot of newer cubers. 

Before I do start into my own ideas on what may help beginning cubers on their way to solving the cube, I do want to give credit to the two primary places online which helped me as I learned how solve the cube myself.

CubeStation - http://www.cubestation.co.uk/ – DanH has a lot of great information on here for beginning cubers and is probably the most well-thought-out tutorial that I found. The Java applets also really help for watching some of the algorithms in action for when you’re unclear on what exactly the notation in the algorithm means you should do. 

Badmephisto on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/badmephisto – A personal hero of mine for making extremely well-made video tutorials for many aspects of solving the cube, including a great 3-part series for beginners as well as more advanced concepts for once you start to get more comfortable with the cube such as intuitive F2L (if you decide to learn the Fridrich method later), advanced cross techniques, commutators, and more. 

So anyway, that all said and done I suppose without an further adieu I present my effort at teaching others how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. 

update 3/3/09: this series of blog entries is actually going to become separate pages within the site to accomodate the addition of some Java applets to help illustrate the points. This post will be updated when the entry point to the series has been created. I do know of at least two of you who have been actively asking where this tutorial is, and all I can say is “soon”.

• Danger Mouse – Who doesn’t love an international spy, especially one who happens to be a mouse with an eyepatch? And who could forget the mini-episodes contained within each DM episode featuring Bananaman? Watch the intro
• Scooby Doo’s Laff-A-Lympics – Probably the ultimate collection of Hanna-Barbara characters ever brought together in one place. Three teams compete each episode in a variety of competitions. Technically this first aired in the late 70’s, but you could still watch the reruns in the early 80’s and any kid watching cartoons probably saw this. Watch the intro
• Turbo Teen – A kid who turns into a car and back into human form when touched with hot or cold water. In my mind this was a much bigger show than it was (I even had the lunchbox back in kindergarten!). If you want to talk about a show almost no one remembers… mention Turbo Teen. Watch the intro
• Photon – You don’t get much campier than a teen laser tag idol who gets recruited by space warriors to fight against the bad guys. Wait, this suddenly sounds exactly like the laser tag equivalent of ‘The Last Starfighter’. Live-action, which means all the clips of the space monster fights et al are just as quality as watching a battle in an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. No, wait, this was worse. Essentially a huge marketing ploy for the Photon home laser tag toys.  Watch the beginning of an episode

Now we’re talking about some obscure 80’s shows.

Wickham Park is a tough course when it wants to be. It’s not an easy course by any stretch, but it can certainly not be unthinkable to come out close to course par (58) if you’re playing intelligently and some of the top guys can routinely finish a round around 54 or better. In the first round I threw an abysmal 66. First hole of the day (Hole 2, for those that know the course), I duff my drive low into the ground where it grabs an edge and skitters Out-of-Bounds. I take my upshot, leave myself 20′ from the pin, and proceed to miss the putt to wind up with a 5. Next hole no real drama, but don’t take the 3 I wanted and card a 4 instead. I miss 15′ birdie putts on holes 4 and 5. I par 6 and 7, and my head is in a good place so far still for the round. Sure, I’ve already missed 3 putts inside 20 feet during the first 4 holes, but being +3 isn’t the end of the world and this can still be a decent round. I then take a 5 on hole 8 after a less-than-stellar drive lands on the edge of the treeline and I have trouble making a respectable upshot (and after approaching again, miss yet another 20-footer). Par out hole 9, then go OB on 10 into the boccee court. Hole 11 card a 5 after taking another OB penalty going over the wall on the right side of the hole. 3 on 12, 4 on 13 after my upshot doesn’t clear the last guardian trees on the edge of the pocket and I miss my putt, 3 on 14 as well. Hole 15 I putt low into the basket to try for deuce (third missed deuce attempt from inside 20′ this round). Hole 16, late wood just outside the pocket means I take a 3. Hole 17, 4th missed deuce putt from inside 20′ as I putt low yet again. Hole 18 my drive somehow doesn’t make it up onto the second plateau, and trying to muscle a TL with an uphill runup into a headwind I stand the disc up and go into the road for another OB penalty: miss the comeback putt due to the bushes between me and the basket, despite making a valiant run at it – another 5. Hole 1, miraculously no drama and the round is finally over.

I never got into my own head all round, at least as far as my spirits were concerned. I kept telling myself that every shot was a new shot, and I truly believed myself. But it was one of those rounds where anything that was going to go wrong, did go wrong. I rarely take an OB penalty at Wickham, especially knowing the course as well as I do when you know exactly how a disc would need to be thrown from almost any spot on the course in order to find it, and I took 4 that round. My rounds are usually pretty good at damage control (mostly), and I had five 5’s on the card – the OB’s certainly didn’t help that fact though. Four missed birdies all within 20′, and other missed putts from inside the same range for 3 or worse. I’m not a great putter, but that was abysmal stats even for my usual track record.

Round 2 was nothing special, shooting a 62 from the long layout (long tee 1, long pins on 7/9/18) which yes shaved 4 strokes off on a layout that probably plays about 3 par strokes tougher overall. And despite feeling fairly tepid about my 62, it still came back with an unofficial rating of 958. The first round? 893. Yes, I’ll say it again, 893. -sigh-

Being sick always sucks, it’s not like being infirmed is some joyous event in any other season. Maybe it’s not only battling the outside heat but also just the feeling of true lost potential due to the fact that you’re sick when it’s summer. Let’s face it, while there admittedly is a lot you can do outside in the colder months there is much more that you can do when it’s nice out. In the winter, I’d probably be lying on my couch anyway since it’s so darn cold out there; I just wouldn’t be blowing my nose as much or have that tight feeling in my chest or have the raging headache. In the summer… I can’t even begin to list all the things you can do. On the perfect day, it almost seems like the possibilities are endless.

Recently I’ve been caught saying that the phrase “burning the candle at both ends” doesn’t nearly describe my activities as of late. It’s more like I stole the wicks off of a half-dozen menorahs, transplanted them all into the candle, and then lit all of them. I’m sure that now that I’m past the ACT my body is merely telling me that I’ve been pushing it too hard, and I’m not one to disagree. But I wish my body could be a little less obnoxious in its methods for getting the point across – maybe just a few days of “wow I’m tired, I need to go to bed early” would have done just fine.

Tournament this upcoming Sunday, fingers crossed I can kick this thing before then. I seem to already be on the upswing after only 48 hours, which is a good sign I think. Off to get another rare 8+ hours of sleep to continue on my road to recovery.

Let’s talk about the good. To many vets of the DS version of Mario Kart, Mario Kart Wii is almost going to feel like “more of the same”. Fortunately for those of us who liked MKDS, this isn’t a bad thing at all. Nintendo didn’t change the formula too dramatically, with the biggest changes coming in the form of motorcycles you can race in (to complement the karts) and the new steering wheel adapter that really does a great job of motion-controlled steering. Bikes are a bit tough to adjust to at first, but if you play the Grand Prix circuits the 100cc circuit is exclusively bikes in an effort to force the player to at least get a taste of them. Bikes can only charge a single level of sparks in drifts, which means they can’t get the same level of Mini-Turbo (MT) coming off a turn as a kart can after charging to the second level, but bikes gain a distinct advantage in the straightaways with the ability to pop wheelies for a small boost in speed. They also handle much tighter than any kart, which is great for tracks with tight corners but can very often leave you stuck in the grass on the inside corner of a turn (or facing the inside corner of a wall) for the inexperienced racer. Still, they’re a nice change to the series and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them stick around for the next installment of the series as well. Fingers crossed Nintendo just stays away from airplanes a-la Diddy Kong Racing.

For the most part, “the good” simply contains Nintendo continuing to do well what they have done well in the past with the series. A healthy number of tracks – 16 brand new and 16 “retro” revamped tracks, similar to what they did in MKDS – with GP’s across 4 race classes: 50cc, 100cc, 150cc, and 150cc mirror where all the tracks are flipped left-to-right. On top of the GP’s, there are Time Trials where you simply race the clock with three boost mushrooms to last the full three laps. Similarly to MKDS, there are Staff Ghosts that come with the game so you can race against a saved ghost to try and better your time with a goal in mind. A new addition in this game are EXPERT Staff Ghost times, which will unlock on a track after you beat a certain time better than the original staff ghosts; these guys are tough, and I doubt most players of the game will ever beat most of these ghosts without serious dedication put into the game.

Online has been slightly re-tooled, mostly for the better. Pick-up-and-play has seen a vast improvement in MKWii over MKDS, with online matches supporting up to 12 players at the same time (and one console can bring 2 players online to play split-screen, also). When you attempt to find a game, you will more often than not be dropped into spectator mode of a session already happening online, where you will have to wait for the current race to be over before going back to the Track Voting screen. Personally I prefer this method over the servers attempting to find players who happen to be looking for a match at the same time all into the same game, especially when you do have the 12-racer limit. You may have a race with 5 people, and the next race will have a full 12 players on the track, which is really nice and also doesn’t limit you to a 4-race, Grand- Prix-style format either, since you can stay in one session and keep racing for as long as you want.

Controllers have been a hot topic of discussion leading up to the game’s release, and I have to say that coming from MKDS I don’t see any alternative to the Classic Controller. The wheel is a great tool for introducing more gamers to the franchise, is implemented very well, and I give Nintendo a lot of credit for not trying to make a true peripheral and instead make the “shell” that they did where the Wiimote fits right into the wheel to act as a controller. Still, ask any powergamer of Mario Kart to race while relying on motion-sensitivity for tricking off of jumps, drag an item and constantly hop in and out of turns with the B-button without feeling like you’re going to sprain a finger, or be able to counter-steer and correct in a turn without being able to rely on button-press response and a more comfortable controller to hold than the side of the wheel: the wheel simply is not going to win over the hardcore racers out there. The wiimote/nunchuck combo works well I suppose, but the top two controllers of choice are definitely the GCN controller or the Classic Controller in my eyes. Personal preference, I feel the cube’s shoulder buttons require too much “depth” to press, and I’m not a big fan of the digital click of them either. The d-pad is and always has been ridiculously small, and these two points going against the cube controller combined with the pure smooth comfort of the CC lets me know where I have a winner.

Now to some of the downsides. First of all, setting up your Friends List has never been more annoying than in MKWii. It has supposedly been made much easier to connect with friends, and the game even has a function that allows you to send a MKWii Friend Invite to someone on your Wii Friends List, which will allow them to simply reply to your message they receive on their bulletin board if they have the game so that you will both automatically be added to each others’ lists. The problem I have found is that the only reliable way for this to work is for BOTH people to send invites to each other, and BOTH people to reply to each others’ invites. Manually entering Friend Codes can take upwards of 24 hours for the “?”-block entry you put in to validate and show your friend’s Mii in your list, and the auto-reply feature one time outright failed for me when my friend and I were trying to get online to play against each other – we ended up deleting each others’ entries after 4 days of the game simply never finding each other and trying again with the “send each other an invite” method.

Speaking of inviting Wii Friends, this sounds like a great feature but like many of the ancillary functions in MKWii, is almost impossible to find. My second very large gripe with the game is just downright user un-friendliness. In order to send a Wii Friend an invite for MKWii, you have to first go to the MKWii Channel. There are 4 permanent menu options here: for Friends, Ghosts, Rankings, Tournaments, and then there is a 5th option that rotates a message every few seconds. Wouldn’t you know, the 5th slot is still a menu option and will sometimes show the “Invite Wii Friends” option. Someone please remind me why this isn’t handily located in the Friends menu again? Even once you do find that option, you can only invite a single Wii Friend at a time before having to go back to the Channel Menu and waiting for that magical scrolling option to come back so you can invite another person.

The Ghosts menu in the channel is the same way. You can either race ghosts from online, where your system will download a random ghost from another player out on the www and you will race to see if you can beat other people, or you can view downloaded ghosts. Fairly straightforward, but this menu completely lacks an interface to a very cool feature that the game contains, which is that you can also send your own ghosts to people in your MKWii Friends List as a “Challenge”. The Ghosts section seems to be a perfect fit for doing something with this feature, but instead you can only do this under the Rankings menu.

The Rankings menu in the channel allows you to view each track in the game with a pseudo-chart of Mii’s that indicate where you are on the bell curve of your Friends, the Regional standings, or the Worldwide standings. You can awkwardly scroll through the Mii’s using the control pad (I don’t believe this screen was made for usability unless you are using the Wiimote and could easily just point-and-click) to look at what people have gotten for times, and even download the ghost for the best racer in the view you’re looking at so you can watch the replay and/or race against them. Also, dun-dun-dunnnn, you can click on your own time for a track from this menu and you will be presented with the option to issue a challenge to someone on your MKWii Friends’ List by sending them your ghost. Very intuitive. Perhaps the worst part about the Rankings is that Nintendo failed to put these lists anywhere but in this channel, meaning that if you are ever practicing Time Trials you have no way of easily checking the leaderboards to see where your latest PR stacks up against the other times that are out there. You will have an option to Check Rankings, but after viewing the rankings your only course of action is to back out to the main menu, where you then have to drill through the main game menus again to get back to the Time Trials.

I’m psyched that we have another iteration of the Mario Kart franchise out, and I’m sure it will entertain me for quite some time to come since I’m still working towards some better GP ranks and shrinking a lot of my Time Trial times. Still, in some ways it feels like Nintendo rushed to get the game out the door without a lot of their usual final polish, and it shows with the haphazard way that the online system tries to work and with all of the accessory features that the game provides being poorly presented to the gamer.

There are a few things in the writer’s theory that I don’t completely agree with, or some things where I think he took a few too many creative liberties stretching what we know into an “answer” in the theory. But overall? I think there’s some really good stuff in there and if nothing else it makes for a good read. Make sure you also continue beyond the theory and read the Q&A as well as the Rebuttals for further explanations surrounding different points presented in the theory.

Season 4 is making good strides towards giving us some answers… or at least leading us down the path towards answers by finally beginning to address some of the core questions. I will be sad when the show finally comes off the air after Season 6, but at the same time I’ll be happy to have most of the questions behind us and know what the heck was really going on. Next week the show comes back from the writers-strike-induced midseason break, and from there on out it’s new episodes every week until the finale. I’m psyched.