Woot! I finally got Portal 2, and so far it rocks!
After playing for an hour, last night’s late bedtime catches up and I take a nap. What do I do when I wake up?
Well, I just finished compiling node.js and will be attempting to bust out some demo website with it. 
Check out our new game: HALLOWEEN PANIC!
We made it in the span of about 10 days. The last 4 days we got about 4-5 hours of sleep! CrAzY! I don’t recommend doing that. ANYWAY, we hope to continue making fun games for everyone!
-Mike
Well, after neglecting this site for a while, I decided it was a good idea to upgrade WordPress for the sake of security. Then the white screen of death reared its ugly head! Unfortunately, I upgraded the site over the browser on my phone, so I wasn’t really in a position to fix it. … Then I got busy… then I forgot… TEN DAYS LATER I finally decided to start disabling plugins (by renaming their folders from “name” to “name.bak”) and renaming them back one by one; testing the site in between each one. Turned out it was just 1 plugin that wasn’t compatible w/ the latest version of WordPress.
SO, if you find you have a white-screen of death, try this:
SO, what did I learn? (And what can you learn to?): Update your plugins before upgrading your WordPress version!
Here’s a game that Domrein and I whipped together in 2 days! He started it one sleepless night, and I finished it one sleepless night.
Enjoy!
Click here to play!
Ever hit a “Java heap space” crash while running Flash’s command-line compiler: mxmlc? There are two ways to fix it:
1. Go to your SDK bin directory in a terminal window. (mac with FB: /Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/3.3.0/bin)
Mac / Linux:
2. edit the ‘mxmlc’ file, look for the “VMARGS=…” line, and change the “Xmx384m” to “Xmx684m”.
Windows:
2. edit “jvm.config” and edit the line starting with “java.args=…”, change “Xmx348m” to “Xmx648m”.
3. The “648″ is the maximum heap size (in megabytes) that the JVM will allocate for the compiling process. You can change this to suit your needs.
If you’re not sure how much memory you’ll need, set it to 1024 (a gig) or so, and compile your app with the “-benchmark” arg. That’ll tell you how much memory was used to compile your app, and you can adjust the final size to be somewhere above what it used.
Here’s some of our first towers and monsters for a tower defense game I’m writing with Paul Milham. I’m not much of an artist, but I’m proud of these towers. 
These monsters were drawn by Edgar Nielson.
Fearsome Frog Fighters
Ok, so I am NO artist. I have only dreamed of drawing awesome stuff. Instead, I program games and other stuff. Anyway, my work has lent me a nice Wacom tablet, and I’ve been having fun.
BAZAAAAM!
My second drawing. Yay!
SO, I just spent the last 2 hours trying to debug a weird system behavior in OS X 10.5.8. Basically it goes something like this:
1. I noticed my computer was abnormally warm.
2. My battery was draining faster than normal.
3. A mysterious process called ReportCrash was opening, eating 60-90% of my CPU, and closing. It did this about every 3-5 seconds.
4. Likewise, another process kept opening and closing at the same interval: mdworker (owned by me, not by root)
5. I looked into the system logs (using Console) and saw that a log file was being generated for each crash report (from mdworker, apparently).
6. After some google research, mdworker is one of the apps in charge of indexing the hdd (with spotlight)
7. Looking into the crash logs:
It appears that “mdworker” hits a divide by zero error “EXC_I386_DIV (divide by zero)” running “MPEGAudioFile::ParseAudioFile()” from “/System/Library/Spotlight/Audio.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Audio”
8. I found an error in the logs reporting that an audio codec (/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin) couldn’t be loaded because it was the wrong architecture. I removed the plugin and rebooted. No effect. 
9. Just a few days ago, I hit a snag trying to open a movie compressed with the DVCPRO HD codec. Comparing the date of the plugin file (in #8) and version (2004 and 1.1) with the same file on a computer that has Final Cut Pro, I regain hope! The file on the Final Cut Pro computer is dated 2007 and is version 1.3. Replacing the old file w/ the new one, I rebooted. …. No plugin crashes reported in the logs! But no effect on mdworker and Audio.mdimporter is still dividing by zero. If only I could get what file it’s crashing on!
10. Well, after searching more forums, I learned that you can omit certain folders from Spotlight’s grasp through its preference pane. I have a work project that contains over 5,000 audio files. This problem started the same day I updated the project and downloaded all 5k files. Making that folder Private (from Spotlight) seemed to fix it immediately!
I still don’t know what the problem was, but I think it was some bad mp3 file in the project tree. A divide by zero error can be avoided in code with a simple check! Now if only I could convince Apple to fix the bug….
Total time spent: 3 hours.
UPDATE 2009 10 07 After filing a bug with Apple, I got the response that the problem is fixed in OSX 10.6. That’s about it. Upgrade to Snow Leopard if you want the proper fix.
UPDATE 2009 11 2 I figured out that you can manually call the mdimporter application, which will crash on the bad file. Run it with the following:
mdimport -d 2 /path/to/suspect/directory
Don’t just run it from root, it will take FOREVER. Also, when it does crash, note the last file it outputs to the terminal window. That isn’t the file at fault. If you navigate to the directory in Finder and list the files in a single column, it’ll be the following file.
One way to verify if a file is at fault, is to set Finder to Column view, and single click on the suspected file. If, in the details in the next column, you don’t see the mp3′s length, bitrate, etc, then that is a bad file. To fix it, try re-exporting it with moderate setting for the bitrate. My files at fault were about 0.5 seconds long, and had a bitrate of about 57 Mb/sec! Capping them at 1200 kb/s fixed the problem.
UPDATE 2009 11 19 Ok, the results are in! All of my problems were caused by bad mp3 headers. If you reconstruct / replace the headers then that will most likely fix the problem. You don’t have to actually re-encode or re-export the mp3 files.
I be taken a pirate personality test, to improve me inner pirate. Here be what I be!
You are The Cap’n!
Some men and women are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any scalawag who stands between them and unlimited power. You never met a man – or woman – you couldn’t eviscerate. You are the definitive Man of Action, the CEO of the Seven Seas, Lee Iacocca in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. You’re mission-oriented, and if anyone gets in the way, that’s his problem, now isn’t? Your buckle was swashed long ago and you have never been so sure of anything as your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off his head if he shows any sign of taking you on or backing down. If one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones’ locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed – a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.
What’s Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!
My pirate name is either:
Raja Ambu Carrier or Bloody William Rackham
I’m kinda liking a mix: Bloody Ambu Rackham
Arrrr!
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