Westboro Baptist Church says it will picket Elizabeth Edwards' funeral
because the media will be there.

You know what's weird.  Westboro Baptist Church does outrageous things to get attention from the media and the media give them attention because they do outrageous things.

They're like the Dennis Rodman of Christianity.

How do you break the cycle?  It's hard to stop paying attention.  It's possible, I guess.  What's more likely is that they won't seem so outrageous after awhile and something more outrageous will come along.

You gotta love Christmas Break.  Why?  Because the Handrew got two books about writing games in Java and has several days off.

One of the books even addresses some of the performance issues I noticed in Coffee Pong.

So what are you saying Handrew, you might finish Coffee Pong?

Don't get your hopes up.  I may decide I'd rather take some naps, but there is a good chance I can improve what I have on Coffee Pong.  I think I may need to reinstall the Java compiler on my computer.  I thought I had a post about that somewhere...

Also, the likelihood of me figuring out how to make Coffee Pong fun is negligible.  The types of books that help people develop fun games are completely different than the ones I received for Christmas.  First, I need to figure out how to write these games.

whatever.  I know there are exactly two people in the world interested in this and at least 60 people who would rather I not spend my free time on this.

Another Playlist from the weird mood I was in when I put it together.

Enjoy.

I see bad things all over the place, but I'm going to ignore them, because that's what I'm supposed to do.

You want me to report them or open these things up for discussion?  I don't think you really do.  You just want me to sweep them under the rug and let you continue to pretend they'll go away on their own.

They won't, of course.  This is all going to end very badly, but that would not be as bad as what you would bring upon us all if I were to speak up and bring these things to your attention. 

People who shoot messengers deserve what they get. whatever.

I was thinking about something I heard a few different times.  "If you know a programming language or two you can pick up just about any language pretty quickly."  The implication was that you didn't have to go and learn very many languages to be a valuable programmer.

I don't know.  I learned to program in BASIC on a Commodore 64.  BASIC on a 80's era toy computer is pretty lame compared to the languages in use today.  I mean, the lamest thing was lack of a real editor.  You had to assign line numbers to each line in the program--by hand.  I know!

whatever.  I've learned a number of languages. Maybe I can pick up a programming language quicker because I've learned so many. What I know about Fortran and Python I learned from troubleshooting existing code.  I'm sure my knowledge of C helped me in both cases, but some languages are not easy to learn for a programmer with experience in only one or two languages.  A few examples:
1.  C is just hard.  You can pick up the basics easily, but it seems to have a greater ability to produce confusion than any other language I've seen.
2.  Object oriented programming (done correctly) requires a change in thinking for people like me who are used to procedural languages.
3.  Knowing a procedural language will probably set you back if you are trying to program a PCL with ladder logic.
4.  Database programming is really weird for someone like me.

I don't know, but hearing statements that imply, "all programming languages are the same," tends to make me think the speaker has not done enough programming to be really useful.  He or she may also be unaware of the reasons for choosing one over the other.

whatever.

I loved the game Master of Orion.  I haven't played it in awhile.  I usually go through a phase every year or two where I get back into playing it.  If you're not familiar with it, it's the greatest galactic strategy game--ever.

This is stupid, but when I play the game on a laptop, it almost takes it to another level.  Perhaps it is because of the black laptop Captain Picard had on his desk in his ready room, but I like to think it's how the leader of a galactic empire would go about giving orders to his empire.

Lame.  I know.  Buried somewhere in my mind is a 12 year old playing pretend space empire who needs to grow up.

I got me thinking about an idea for a game--a business simulator that has the look and feel of ERP software like SAP.  The interface would be easy.  The game would abstain from graphics any more sophisticated than this.

Maybe the idea of turning SAP into a game isn't unique.  I know Thomas did a competition involving SAP in graduate school.  I've heard of business simulators from friends in college taking business or MIS classes.  I think the only difference between my idea and the others would accessibility.  It shouldn't be any harder to get into and play than Hedgehog Launch, for example.

If the game could scale up to something like Master of Orion, easy to learn, hard to master and still fun to play after hundreds of hours lost to playing the game, you might have a situation similar to me pretending to be a galactic emperor.  You could pour yourself a glass of single malt Scotch, sit down at your desk at home, open up the laptop and play my game.  You'd be a regular Jack Donaghy, managing your corporate empire of television programming and microwave ovens.

whatever.

Right now I have real software to write...

Televangelist says he cheated on wife

I'm tempted to make this a crap headline.  I won't, but honestly, I believe that most Televangelists cheat on their wives.  And isn't the Televangelist having an affair story kind of old? Isn't the modern fashion for them to have affairs with other men?

Maybe I'm too cynical.  These religious leaders are just people, after all--people leading other people astray.