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Thunder Busters

registeredname — 2010-09-26T23:48:09-04:00

This blew my mind:

Great Place To Put An Airport

goodladd — 2009-11-14T11:31:44-05:00

From The World's Scariest Runways

Sooooo Looking Forward To This

vinny9 — 2009-11-11T12:36:39-05:00

Adventure Time production blog

Not Talkin' 'Bout Blackjack

vinny9 — 2009-09-04T10:27:27-04:00

% of women who believe it's ok for husbands to hit them

Our confused thoughts are with her

chrisdye — 2008-11-26T15:04:43-05:00

This website had a 25-year-old woman's picture with the caption "Barbara Bush".
--------
Update: they have now removed the picture, which it turns out was of Barbara P. Bush, 27-year-old daughter of W. This family seriously needs some new first names.

Random Links for May 21

dustin — 2008-05-21T07:00:02-04:00

Consciously Creating New Habits Fosters Creativity.
"You cannot have innovation unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder."

Golden Ears Provincial Park.
Awesome campgrounds not far from Vancouver.

Spencer Herbert - Vancouver West End.
Candidate for the BC NDP nomination in the new West End riding.

Random Links for May 17

dustin — 2008-05-17T07:00:02-04:00

Surreal paintings of Jacek Yerka [awesome].

My experiment with smart drugs.

Join the online Translink advisory panel.

Magnetic North Theatre Festival - June 4-14 in Vancouver.

Chart comparing food consumption in different countries [image].

Random Links for January 10

dustin — 2008-01-10T07:00:01-05:00

Groovera.com - 3 Awesome Free Web Radio Stations.

Investigating the Placebo Effect and Mind-Body Connection.

Is there a place for LSD in medicine today?

The Hofbrauhaus Catastrophe - funny [PIC].

Lumetro - Energy Efficient Lighting for Businesses.

Best Suggestions from Vancouver Transit Camp

dustin — 2007-12-12T02:24:26-05:00

One of the best TransitCamp sessions was the wide-ranging Suggestions for Transit discussion. That link has a huge number of great suggestions. Here are my picks for getting the most bang for the buck:

Give Skytrain Stations Character
Each station should have a unique character. Murals and artwork should cover all the walls where people wait and pass by. Each station should look different, visually appealing, and represent the style of the area around it. Granville & Burrard stations are indistinguishable currently.

Vancouver has an existing mural program that Translink should take advantage of for this. Skytrain stations right now are boring; there is room for drastic improvement here.

Give Skytrain Stations Activity
Skytrain platforms are high traffic areas, but there aren't any services there. Translink needs to build little villages in these areas. Coffee shops, magazines shops, bakeries (ideally with personality - not just corporate feel).

Bakeries would be fabulous; imagine skytrain stations smelling like freshly baked bread! Make this a nice place to be, not merely a boring place to wait. Burrard station mid-level should have this pronto! Kiosks directly on some skytrain platform are also a great idea.

These things could be money makers for Translink, while improving the rider experience at the same time.

Load Buses Better
Load buses from the back doors anytime there is a bottleneck at the front door. Faster loading speeds speeds up the system for everyone. Front-door only loading is like bad DRM that inconveniences everyone from a fear of a few. Translink is shooting themselves in the foot by introducing a bottleneck into the system at the front door of every bus, at every stop.

Improve Bus Stops
The walls of bus shelters are being wasted right now. Put maps of the city here! And transit maps, and a nice 'You are here' dot. This would be a great boon for tourists and new users.

Open the Data
There are lots of people who would love to build services using the route/timing data Translink has. So open up the data and let them! The core competency of Translink is not information technology; open-source it.

Make It Happen Translink
That's the end of my list. I hope that Translink moves on these items. They could make a big difference to our transit service here. Props to the all the participants at Vancouver Transit Camp for bringing out these suggestions.

Vancouver Bus Times via Text Messages

dustin — 2007-12-11T02:02:23-05:00

Translink has finally finished their official system to get upcoming bus times via text message. To use it:

- Send a text message to phone number 33333.
- The text inside the message you send needs to be the 5 digit unique number for the bus stop you're at. You can find this number in the upper right hand corner of all bus stop signs (or look on the TransLink website).
- They will text you back with upcoming bus numbers and times.

I tested this service out today and it worked for me. The reply text came back very fast too. Nice!

This info comes via Vancouver Transit Camp.

Bring Your Own Mini-Bus Transit

dustin — 2007-12-09T19:22:04-05:00

Large portions of the world have a bring-your-own mini-bus transit system. Where anyone who has seats can pick up people waiting at transit stops.

The government could enable some form of this here by giving taxis the ability to pick up multiple passengers. Taking it further, ad-hoc carpooling at transit hubs could eventually fill many of the empty seats in cars on the road.

This post is based on ideas raised at Vancouver Transit Camp during the session Private Alternatives and Curb Rights.

PS: The government should also just buy more buses! Instead they waste our money on disastrous mega-projects like the Cambie line.

Advice for making it as a musician

dustin — 2007-04-09T03:42:56-04:00

Here's a provocative video interview from surf-rocker Dick Dale, where he shares his advice for up-and-coming musicians.

Hot Grog: fast news

dustin — 2006-11-24T00:23:52-05:00

Hot Grog is a new website I setup to quickly read the internets. It uses RSS to grab news headlines from various sources and dumps them out in a simple list.

There's a few different pages covering various topics. Web Buzz is a great page to see all the fun stuff as it happens across the internet.

Please let me know what you think.

ReviewMe - a blog review marketplace

dustin — 2006-11-17T06:07:01-05:00

ReviewMe is a new site that is trying to setup a marketplace where bloggers can offer to write honest reviews in exchange for money. The money comes from companies or individuals who want to get reviews. I think it's an interesting idea. Getting reviews can be tough sometimes, so having a straight up chance to buy an honest one can be a good deal. I'm testing out the system with Lux Delux, having just put in a review request for a blog that looked interesting.

ReviewMe is also spicing things up with an initial pool of $25,000 that they are paying out to bloggers to review the service itself. That's what this post is: a sponsored post from ReviewMe. I will apparently get payed $30 in exchange for this review of their system. The pay-out is dependent on each individual blog's traffic standings (as best as ReviewMe can estimate them at least). The only imposition on the review is that it must be at least 200 words long, and it has to state that it is sponsored.

I had a bit of trouble signing up initially, but once inside their system is pretty good. They got some good early buzz, and there's a variety of interesting blogs that have signed up in their system. I'm awaiting the results of buying my review before making further judgement.

Question Answerer 2

dustin — 2006-02-13T03:11:23-05:00

Have a question? Put it in the email body and send it to q@askforcents.com (leaving the subject line blank) and you'll get an answer. Actually, you'll get at least 2 answers. And you'll usually get them in mere seconds. This forms the alpha testing of a service Ask For Cents, clearly meant to have a cost associated with it eventually.

I had a lot of fun asking random questions. About how the service works, tech questions, what the future holds, social policies, love tips, and more. The answers I got back ranged from funny to informative to literal to snooty to wrong. It's like a magic 8 ball, except you get a real human answer. Try it out now while it's free.

The service is run by Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk service. It allows computers to send work packets to humans to be filled in exchange for money. Pretty awesome idea IMHO. Answerers are currently making 3 cents per question, but inform me they are hoping for more valuable ones in the future.

Personal branding

dustin — 2005-07-30T20:04:30-04:00

Back at last year's IndieGamesCon I attended a good session on marketing from Kelly Heckman. In it she talked about building up a brand for your company, for your products, and for yourself as a person. The last item is what concerns me at the moment.

Having a weblog is an excellent way to build up your 'personal brand'. Unfortunately, I think that sillytech was hampering this somewhat. It's a group blog, and even though I have a page there to myself, it's not really mine. So I decided to start a personal blog that's all my own. Actually, I decided to take the sillytech code and create a personal skin that uses the same content database, but only shows my stuff. So nothing will change at sillytech, however I now also have a blog that's just for me. From now on I'm going to be spending my efforts building up Dustin Sacks' blog instead of sillytech.

The design is still a first version. I know I need a better picture of myself, and I want to put my blogroll up also. Any other comments you have on the design or layout or colors are appreciated.

Hiring is obsolete

dustin — 2005-05-17T20:25:04-04:00

Programmer and author Paul Graham just wrote an interesting article entitled Hiring is Obsolete. It's geared towards young programmers, but there's some nice stuff in there for everyone.

The main cost of starting a Web-based startup is food and rent. Which means it doesn't cost much more to start a company than to be a total slacker.
...
Actually college is where the line ends. Superficially, going to work for a company may feel like just the next in a series of institutions, but underneath, everything is different. The end of school is the fulcrum of your life, the point where you go from net consumer to net producer.

The other big change is that now, you're steering. You can go anywhere you want. So it may be worth standing back and understanding what's going on, instead of just doing the default thing.

Blasted resume

dustin — 2004-12-03T03:19:59-05:00

So it seems to me that posting a resume that includes some quality buzzwords onto the net is a good way of getting recruited. I checked my logs and saw a hit from a search for "resume or cv and j2me or j2me developer or mobile game", which would explain this email I just got:

Hi Dustin,�

I wanted to take the time to reach out to you after having had the 
opportunity of coming across your resume online.� I am an account 
manager with [company name removed] which is the leading recruiting 
agency for the video game industry.� I have several clients in the 
wireless games space that are looking for experienced software 
engineers for full-time employment, specifically J2ME & BREW Engineers.� 
Currently I am trying fill positions for these clients in the S.F. Bay 
Area, New York, Montreal and London.� Based on your background, I 
believe that they would be very interested in speaking with you in 
more detail as would I.

EA Interview Preparation Info

dustin — 2004-11-27T17:57:53-05:00

Ever since I wrote about my EA interview saga I have been getting periodic emails from people. They all basically say "I have an interview with EA on {day of week}. Can you give me some advice on what to do?"

I have answered a few, but I think it would be best to just put my advice here so that people stop emailing me about it =). Here goes:

I wrote most of what they asked my in the above referenced blog entry. I was surprised when they started asking stuff about vectors and matrixes and geometry. Things like finding the normal of 3 points on a plane, doing some trigonometry, matrix multiplication. Nothing too in depth, but it might be worthwhile to do a basic review of such things.

They will also ask you C++ stuff. If your C++ isn't too hot then it is worth reviewing it. Perhaps write a little program to get into the swing of it. I was asked a question to which the correct solution used recursion.

In general I think it is good to talk out your answers, so they know what you are thinking. Even if you get something wrong they can see what you were trying to do. I know that I didn't get all the answers right. Also I think it is very important to interact well with the interviewers. Be the nice and friendly person you know you are ;). The interviewers will be looking for people that they would like to work with. Try and have a nice chat with them.

Also while I am writing this I would just like to point out that EA has been criticized for their labor practices. The 'inside scoop' says that they like to hire bright young students out of university and work them to death. Such a job would still be an excellent learning experience, but you should know what you are getting in to.

Best of luck on your interview.

No government = good phone service

dustin — 2004-11-23T04:02:31-05:00

Telecoms thriving in lawless Somalia

A host of mobile phone masts testifies to the telecommunications revolution which has taken place despite the absence of any functioning national government since 1991.

It takes just three days for a landline to be installed - compared with waiting-lists of many years in neighbouring Kenya, where there is a stable, democratic government.

IndieGamesCon 2004 continued...

dustin — 2004-10-10T06:28:06-04:00

Here's some more info about what's going on at the IndieGamesCon. It has been really good so far. Yesterday was registration along with an intro, gaming time and some meet and greet stuff. Today the actual sessions started.

The first talk was by Garr Godfrey, one of the founders of GameHouse. He told the story of the company from start to when they got bought by Real Networks for $35 million in January of this year. It was a good talk, and put a little weight behind how this is a real business going on here. They tried some different business models before focusing on downloadable games as "the future".

The second talk was by Michael Robertson. He was the founder of MP3.com (which he sold a few years ago), and currently runs Linspire, which is trying to be a user-friendly Linux distribution. From the start he said that he didn't know much about gaming (especially compared to the crowd), but that he was there to give a talk about business. He was a good speaker and his talk wa excellent. The focus was on startups, how to get rich, and his love of disruptive technologies. Three key points:

Right size your business

No MBAs

Marketing is most important

The day continued with some smaller sessions and game playing (there's a nice lan setup here with a bunch of games). I have met a variety of interesting people from different areas: developers, gaming website operators, media folk, students, etc. I would write about it in more detail, but I need to get some sleep for tomorrow.

The conclusion of the EA recruitment effort

dustin — 2004-09-02T15:24:45-04:00

A little while ago I was contacted and then interviewed by Electronic Arts for a programming job. After that they requested some references which I provided.

On monday they called me up again with a job offer. It was quite a nice offer to boot, with a solid base salary, moving expenses (the job is in Vancouver), a yearly bonus, some stock options as well as a stock buy-in discount program and the normal health benefits and such. By far the best offer I have ever seen. Of course it's not all candy and roses. Taking a job with EA would mean giving up (or sharply cutting back) my work on Lux, as well as future projects (which I have many ideas for). It would also mean moving to Vancouver, a city in which I know nobody, but which has a nicer winter climate.

It was a really tough decision for me to make. Many thanks go to my roommate Nikki for helping talk it over and bring out the core issues (the pros and cons are still written on our fridge).

In the end I decided to not take the EA job. It would have given me more money in the short term, but I am not exactly hurting for money at the moment. The fact that it would have sapped away my free time and the flexible situation I currently enjoy was the killing factor.

I am happy with my decision. Sillysoft lives on to fight another day!

Update: please read this info before emailing me

The Loser's Paradox

dustin — 2004-08-18T00:29:37-04:00

Economists who study government (public choice theorists) have since the 1970s been interested in the "Loser's Paradox." Can it help explain the content of our copyright and telecommunications laws?

Economists have noted that a surprising amount of government support goes to ailing sectors instead of expanding sectors. Classically, agriculture, textiles, clothing, footwear, steel and shipbuilding are the examples of industries on perpetual life support. Each has been in decline for decades, yet get more help from Government than any other. Conversely, expanding industries, like the high-tech industry, rarely if ever receive government assistance. In short, economists conclude, Government picks losers.

Read the rest here.

My programmer job interview with Electronic Arts

dustin — 2004-08-10T13:34:54-04:00

So I had an in-person job interview today with EA, to follow up from the phone conversation of last week. It lasted almost 2 hours in total, and consisted of 2 separate one-on-one interviews with programmer guys, and then a little chat with a HR person.

I was asked lots of technical stuff by the engineer guys. The questions started with asking some specifics about my game Lux and what technologies I had used for it. Things like the build system, version control, etc. Some questions about how I was managing the cross-platform aspects of the code between the macintosh and windows versions.

Then there were some c++ questions. Things like "Here's a c++ header file. There are a whole bunch of errors in here, please point them out to me." Unfortunately my c++ is a little rusty, so I didn't too all that great on this part. I was also asked to fill out a few functions from their prototypes. One to count the depth of a tree, and one to implement the atoi() function. I was able to do this OK, with some help from them pointing out where my errors were (hehehe).

I was also asked about some good old fashioned mathematics problems. Now Algebra and Geometry was one of my favorite classes in high school (math is fun!), but not as much so in university (where it got a lot more abstract). Plus I was well out of practice. Questions were on the topics of vectors, matrices, and some trigonometry. Surprise test: What does it mean if the determinant of a matrix is 0?

I didn't get all of the math questions right, but I think I did pretty well overall. All of the interviewers were nice people, and it seems as if EA has got a pretty sweet compound in Vancouver. Oh yeah, I don't think I mentioned it, but the job would be in Vancouver. It would be a big change.

There would be a whole lot of plusses and minuses to such a job. I get worn out whenever I try to think about it in depth. So it's just wait and see what happens. They said they would probably get back to me next week.

Update: read the stunning conclusion, and read this info before emailing me

A possible kink in my plans

dustin — 2004-07-29T08:53:41-04:00

I just finished a 45-minute phone interview with Electronic Arts, the biggest videogame company in the world. Apparently they found my resume on the internet.

Update: read about my interview and the stunning conclusion

Battlix

dustin — 2004-06-02T23:25:31-04:00

As Lux has become more popular the amount of bandwidth required of me has been rising. I had a little secret in the fact that my McGill CS account was never shut off. It comes with a little webspace and what has appeared so far to be uncapped bandwidth. So I have been mostly using that to host Lux from.

However, I'm pretty sure that they were supposed to shut off my account last year. Which means there's a definite chance they will actually get around to it this year. Then there's the expectation that the windows version of Lux will double (or more?) the bandwidth that I need.

So I figured it was time to move from my shitty shared webhosting account (meaning lots of people share a server) to something more serious. I shopped around for quite some time looking at all the options available. The range goes from a couple of dollars a month (for sharing the server with 100s of other people) to hundreds of dollars a month (for your own server managed by a team of experts). By far, the best deal I found was at ServerMatrix. They offer dedicated servers with a HUGE amount of bandwidth for not that much money.

So now I have a dedicated server to call my own. I named him battlix. Here are his specs:

Server: Super Celeron 1.7 GHz - Setup: $199.00 - Monthly Fee: $59.00
Primary HDD: 80GB Hard Drive
Secondary HDD: None
RAM: 512 MB RAM
Number of ips: 5 IP Addresses
Bandwidth: 1200 GB Bandwidth 
Uplink Port Speed: 10 Mbps Uplink
Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Version 3 (recommended)
Server Management Plan: Silver
Control Panel: CPanel/WHM with Fantastico - Monthly Fee: $20.00
Hostname: battlix.com

I was pleasantly surprised when he identified himself as a 2.4 GHz Celeron after I got my grubby little paws on him (via SSH of course) - bonus!.

I have been moving things over for the past few days. Tonight I flip the switch on sillytech.com (including my main email account). While the DNS propagates I am redirecting everything to run off a different domain. In closing: Yeeeee-Haw!!!

Engineering versus distribution

dustin — 2004-05-24T01:27:56-04:00

"The days of engineering-led technology companies are coming to an end," Mr. Dell declared.

So quotes an interesting New York Times article entitled "The Distributor vs. the Innovator". It's about the different strategies of Dell and HP in the printer market.

Dell was able to dramatically lower the price of a computer. It does it by not having anything to do with building the machines. Will it be able to do the same with printers? It seems like HP currently has a solid technology lead, but I think that people will go where the ink is cheapest.

Interesting fact: The New York Times charges for access to its archives. So that link above will die a painful death in one week.

When to sell a stock

dustin — 2004-04-18T21:36:17-04:00

I was reading an article at the Motly Fool and I came across a nice tidbit that I like. It gives one of the conditions for selling a stock:

The reasons you bought are no longer valid

Whenever you buy any stock, jot down the reasons. That can help boost your confidence in your purchase. It can also help you determine when to sell -- if some or all of those reasons are suddenly no longer valid.

Make More Mistakes

dustin — 2004-02-16T03:00:04-05:00

From an article on entrepreneurs:

At the top of the scumbag pile, as the lesser of four evils, are the lawyers.

Just below that you've got the people who cheat senior citizens with scams.

A bit further down, you find the pimps.

Finally, at the very bottom of the scumbag hierarchy, you find the investment bankers.

Burlington, Vermont

dustin — 2004-02-13T00:16:53-05:00

I went on a business trip this week to Burlington, Vermont. Me, Alex (another developer) and Ivana (the quality assurance department) drove down monday morning, stayed overnight, and drove back late tuesday. The purpose of the trip was to test the Deepak Chopra and NHL applications on the Sprint PCS network. There is no Sprint data service in Canada, so that's why we have to go down to the states.

It was quite an enjoyable trip all in all. We stayed at the Sheraton hotel, and it had a pool and a hot tub (yes, I went in both of them). There's high-speed internet in all the rooms for $10 for 24 hours (that was used for work purposes). Some bugs (and/or gotchas) were found in both applications and they were all fixed. So we were ready to proclaim them ready to ship off to Sprint. However then late on tuesday we found out that there was a requirement for Sprint applications that use recurring monthly charges that the user be able to cancel their subscription from inside the app. Since we were unaware of this before we hadn't implemented it. Aboo!

So that means that there will probably be a day trip down there (or more likely to Plattsburg) next week, to test out the subscription canceling once it has been implemented.