Sun Dublan
November 2004 Archives 

November 22, 2004

iButton URL 03:51 PM, 0 Comments

Just need to log that I found a site with a cheaper combo temperature/humidity 1-wire sensor here. I'll probably get one of these to stick in the shade for a shade-temperature and humidity reading. To get a temperature and humidity sensor (sold separately) at aag costs about double the price. I have yet to find an economical 1-wire barometer sensor.

November 17, 2004

Half-Life 2 01:19 PM, 0 Comments

While I'm in here, I might as well write a bit about Half-Life 2. I picked up Half-Life 2 last night (and played 'till 3am!) It is very good. It beats Doom3, easy. The best part is the physics. Wood floats, iron sinks, mattresses bend, things tumble down stairs. If you shoot something in mid-air, it flops to the ground under its own physics. You can shoot a wood ledge and it all falls with all the stuff on top tumbling to the ground. Another cool thing about half-life2 is the facial expressions. The characters have facial expressions, it's really cool. Before, to move a barrel or box, you had to shoot it till it blew up. Now, you just pick it up and move it. Half-life 2 has simple puzzles that allow you to play with the physics in the world. that's the best part in my opinion. like getting those plastic barrels that are full of air and putting them under a ledge that fell in the water to make it come up, so you can make a ramp to ramp your swamp-buggy on it.

Java 01:10 PM, 0 Comments

I haven't written in here for a while because I've been deep into developing a little program in Java. I'll probably post it when I'm done. Suffice it to say, Java is neat, but it sucks at the same time. I've been spoiled by Perl's hashrefs and scalar types. So much code is dedicated to swiching types back and forth in Java. Other than that, Java just rocks on the object-oriented stuff. It's so easy to do exactly what you need in an object, instance variables versus class variables, public versus private, etc. And the way the Eclipse development environment compiles as you type and gives you feedback immediately about stuff just rocks.

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