Jared White's Blog: Developer Preview 2 of Willowgarden has been released today
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Jared White has released the latest Developer Preview of his application framework for PHP 5 - Willowgarden DP2.   I'm so pleased to announce that Developer Preview 2 is ready. This is where the project is really starting to solidify and settle into a cohesive whole that can be used for hands-on development. I've been working on several Web site and applications using the DP2 codebase, and it has made my life as a PHP developer so much more fun than the bad old days of cobbling together scripts nearly from scratch.   A new wiki for the project has also been launched with content already being added - a User Guide and areas for tutorials and howtos. Jared also puts a call out to PHP 5 developers out there looking for something to get involved with to take a good look at the Willowgarden project and send him an email ("remove everything after jared before the @ sign").
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Gabe: I know we don't talk about our game much. We really don't want to beat you guys over the head with it. Honestly we handle most of our big projects that way. We try to make coming here "easy" and I don't want you guys to feel like you're constantly being pitched something. Balancing that against the fact that if we don't tell you about things like new shirts and books you are less likely to purchase them is tricky. another reason for the lack of coverage is that we really weren't sure the game was going to be any good. We're doing a lot of the art and all the writing but the reality is that this was a collaboration with the Hothead guys and until very recently I wasn't convinced making the game was a good idea.Tycho said it best in a couple interviews "games look like shit until they look awesome." it's really more than that though because they also play like shit until they are fun. I remember getting the first build months ago and telling Tycho we should scrap the entire thing. The builds kept coming though and they kept getting better and better. I understand now that that's just how game development works. It wasn't until the most recent build that I finally saw something genuinely fun. The Hothead guys obviously knew what they were making but for me it was like looking at a sketch and not understanding how it could ever be a finished painting. I've played through it multiple times now and I can tell you truthfully that it's funny and it's fun to play. If you like PA I believe you will enjoy it. If you don't know about PA I think you will still laugh and If you hate us you'll hate our game. The game just hit beta and Hothead is polishing it more and more every day. I can tell you that what I see right now I'm honestly proud of. Tycho has written some of his best stuff for this game. Like me, he hates himself and hates the things he makes so he would never link you to this, but I feel like he deserves it. A while back Tycho spent a week at the Hothead studio writing non stop for the game. Ron Gilbert was up there as well and he posted this on his blog shortly after."Jerry from PA is up here as well doing the writing and it's a thrill to see him work.He's a top-shelf writer, right up there with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman."I'm sure when Tycho sees I linked that he'll go right for his wrists, but it's true. An early build of the game recently made its way through the media digestive system. The result is that you will see coverage of it popping up at many of your favorite game news sites. Everything I've seen so far has been very positive but I guess that's the way it is with previews. I think the best place to go is Gametrailers as they simply post high quality video of the game being played. You can make your own decisions based on what you see. If you want more you can watch the 1up show where a narcoleptic Jedi will tell you that the game is "like not really like PA but also like totally like PA." Maybe that's helpful to someone? The Gamelife blog over at Wired also has a very complete write up of the game if you want more than just raw footage. It's funny, before the game I never would have thought twice about calling someone a narcoleptic Jedi. After I had typed it out though I paused. Am I Derek Smart now? Will this effect our PR persons relationship with 1Up and other media outlets? Will they savage us in their review and will that hurt sales? Should I not talk about the coverage at all?Even if all of that is true should I care?Obviously the answer is no. -Gabe out
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Perl script that automatically searches for new episodes of your favorite TV shows and downloads the corresponding NZB files from various free sources on the internet.   This release is mostly just to update the .shows file and the README.  I was sleepy, and I stupidly said that you do not have to have the  element in your shows file.  Turns out I'm just an idiot, and you do.  I have updated the .shows file to include the proper template for most shows, which is %name%.S%season%E%episode%  Sorry about that!  I also started a code optimization run which will hopefully over time make things run faster and more efficiently.  I just picked off the low hanging fruit on this release, because I wanted to get the updated README out before too many people had problems.
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New 'Places' feature added to alpha release set for next week.
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Since we launched at Web2  last week there has been a log of great feedback about Rojo .    First off is this *great* new Austin Power logo from Constantin Basturea   Smashing Baby!  On the subject of eye candy check out the CafePress store  that Chris  put together.  Very hip indeed!  I might get this for my girlfriend:  ... and this for my backpack:  We've been getting a lot of great feedback.  Thanks to everyone  for helping us out during our beta trial!  We even have our first Rojo external plugin :  "My room mate, Dylan Parker, has just released a plugin for FireFox named JustBlogIt. JustBlogIt is a Mozilla / Firefox extension that allows easy right-click posting to a weblog. It a ...
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?
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With the release of HIT Lab NZ's OSGART (OpenSceneGraph + ARToolKit) framework imminent, I'm pleased to announce a release of the GPL-licensed ARToolKit v2.   Download ARToolKit 2.72 at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=116280  ARToolKit 2.72 contains a number of improvements over previous releases, with several of these focussed on the video capture libraries. Wayne Piekarski and Hartmut Seichter have substantially updated the Linux video input and added Pointgrey and Gstreamer video capture.  Those of you trying to integrate ARToolKit's coordinate system with existing OpenGL drawing will be pleased to see versions of the OpenGL projection and modelview matrix creation functions which now return right-hand coordinate systems.  Integration with OpenSceneGraph is the focus of our current and future work in the area of advanced graphics capabilities atop ARToolKit. However, this release also updates libARvrml so that it binds correctly to the recently updated OpenVRML 0.16.1.  There are a number of smaller improvements, bug fixes and reference documentation updates included. Please download the release and have a look at the readme and changelog.  We have also added more explicit direction on ARToolKit licensing to the Readme. Please be aware that the GPL-licensed ARToolKit cannot be used in a closed-source product. Closed-source licenses to ARToolKit Professional are available from ARToolworks in return for financial support of ARToolKit development efforts.  If you find bugs in this GPL release, please post in ARToolKit's bug tracker on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=116280&atid=674305. This is the preferred forum for bug reports. Patch submissions are also welcomed.  And yes, bugs fixes and other improvements are available between official ARToolKit releases by checking out the source from Sourceforge ARToolKit CVS repository using anonymous CVS. A simple tutorial on how to get the ARToolKit source using a CVS GUI tool is at http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=25731&group_id=116280.  Thanks to all the contributors to this release.  Philip Lamb HIT Lab NZ
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Travis Swicegood is teasing us with some output from a script in his latest blog post:   So my free time of late (what there is of it) has been spent on a project that's getting really close to v0.1 release. In other words, its first functional release. If you've ever run a test using the PEAR installer or know what a .phpt file looks like, you might be able to guess what I've been up.   Keep an eye on his blog for more information on his "secret project".
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Gabe: We did a really awesome project (can I say it"s awesome, is that okay?) for Wired magazine. You can either go pick up the most recent issue and read it there or check it out on their site. They asked us to do a piece for them handicapping all three of the next generation systems. We tried to be as fair as we could and hopefully you"ll get a kick out of it.
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Demian Turner has posted about the latest version of the Seagull framework (0.6.3) and an update to correct a remote file disclosure issue (up to version 0.6.4).   Well it took a bit of time but after quite a few months a new release of Seagull is finally out, 0.6.3 (0.6.4). Things have been keeping pretty busy with the startup I'm working on, but it's been a great opportunity to refine some features of the framework and optimize the performance.  The early indications are good, after less than 10 weeks of going live Kindo users are creating up to 20k profiles/day and the server load is staying comfortably below 0.5.   The update is a different download that helps correct an issue with the framework allowing user-inputted values from the GET string. Be sure and update your version to keep this security issue under wraps.
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Alchemi is a software framework that allows you to painlessly aggregate the computing power of networked machines into a virtual supercomputer (computational grid) and to develop applications to run on enterprise grids.      We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.6. The major changes since 1.0.5 are a LUA (Least Privileged User Account) operation for both Manager, Executor in normal and service mode and an option for executing user's GThreads in a secure sandbox (experimental)  Please note that this is a developer release intended for enthusiasts and early adopters as documentation is not up to date.     Go here for downloading the files in this release:     http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66729&package_id=186776&release_id=456163
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DevShed has a new article posted today covering some of the new features in PHP5.
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Developers of the NetBeans released the second beta iteration version 4.0 software last week, squashing more than 900 bugs found in the first beta release.
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A beta version is due this week, so developers can get started before the release in March.
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Killing two birds with one stone Hands on Iâve been fascinated by cross-platform programming for more years than I care to remember, and my interest has recently been sharpened by the acquisition of a number of Apple Macs â both Intel and PPC (PowerPC). This article focuses primarily on some technical aspects of Qt, Trolltechâs cross-platform C++ toolkit which, as you may know, is the architectural core behind the KDE desktop on Linux. At the end, I show how easy it is to create a simple application without writing a line of code.â¦
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New version of popular game leaked before its October 26 release.
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