Holy crap. Watch this person play Marble Madness:
Marble Madness was one of the few games I ever played with any regularity when I was a kid. I played the Amiga version a fair bit and I thought I was pretty good at it. I played quite a few "perfect" games at the hardest level and I was pretty quick too.
If I thought I was good at Marble Madness, all I need to do is to look at this video to understand very clearly that there are people out there who were/are a lot better at it than I ever was.
21 January 2009
17 January 2009
Gear Review: Toro 1800 Electric Snow Thrower
Hey, did you read the recent news that Belkin's development rep is hiring people to write fake positive Amazon reviews? I guess this gentleman (and possibly company...) has decided that it would be a better investment to essentially commit fraud rather than actually make a product that works well. Way to go!
(I'm not shocked that there are fake reviews on Amazon -- I mean, this is obvious -- but I do find the brazen manner in which this is being arranged to be surprising)
Anyways, I have another (real) gear review: The Toro 1800 Electric Snow Thrower.
My gear review will be pretty short and sweet: this thing works pretty well. I've used it for two winters now and it still works well. For snow depths of less than (say) eight inches this thing works like a champ. For depths greater than this, then things get a bit harder. I happened to use this thing two weeks ago after a storm dumped 16 inches of somewhat dry/powdery snow on my driveway -- this thing handled everything except for the snow at the end of my driveway. With 16 inches of snow the going was slow but steady.
I like this thing because it (1) works well (2) is maintenance-free (3) doesn't require me to maintain yet another balky gas engine (4) I figure that this thing has to lead to less overall pollution than the balky 2-stroke gas snowblower that this thing replaced.
If you have a really large driveway or if you absolutely need to clear your driveway really quickly, then maybe this isn't the tool for you. For my purposes, this thing works really well.
(I'm not shocked that there are fake reviews on Amazon -- I mean, this is obvious -- but I do find the brazen manner in which this is being arranged to be surprising)
Anyways, I have another (real) gear review: The Toro 1800 Electric Snow Thrower.
My gear review will be pretty short and sweet: this thing works pretty well. I've used it for two winters now and it still works well. For snow depths of less than (say) eight inches this thing works like a champ. For depths greater than this, then things get a bit harder. I happened to use this thing two weeks ago after a storm dumped 16 inches of somewhat dry/powdery snow on my driveway -- this thing handled everything except for the snow at the end of my driveway. With 16 inches of snow the going was slow but steady.
I like this thing because it (1) works well (2) is maintenance-free (3) doesn't require me to maintain yet another balky gas engine (4) I figure that this thing has to lead to less overall pollution than the balky 2-stroke gas snowblower that this thing replaced.
If you have a really large driveway or if you absolutely need to clear your driveway really quickly, then maybe this isn't the tool for you. For my purposes, this thing works really well.
04 January 2009
(Don't) Throw It Over The Wall
I used to work at an interesting shop in which the general culture of the place regarded the SQA staff as being one step above moldy bread or something you find growing between your toes. This situation was succinctly expressed by a single catch-phrase; this phrase was uttered whenever a new software release was given to SQA:
THROW IT OVER THE WALL
In the culture of this place, the ultra-smart software engineers sat on one side of an imaginary wall, and the not-very-bright SQA staff sat on the other side of the wall. "Throw it over the wall" was the derisive phrase that the software organization used when it wanted to get the SQA organization to test some shiny and new software trinket that they produced. In general, the relationship between the software engineers and the SQA staff was not good.
I really wasn't wild about this dynamic. I mean, let's be honest: there were people of all abilities in both groups....just like at every other company.
The thing that bothered me about the "throw it over the wall" dynamic that went on at this place was that all this culture did was serve to demoralize the SQA staff. Furthermore, "throw it over the wall" frequently meant "give the SQA staff the software with very little documentation -- very little in the way of requirements, functional specifications, etc.". Sometimes I had no idea how the SQA team tested out the final product. I could tell that this situation bugged the more talented members of the SQA staff a lot.
There was very little I could do to change the dynamic at this place. For the period of time that I worked there, I at least tried to treat the SQA staff that I worked with as if they were partners in creating the product that we were all supposed to be creating. The results of this were generally positive -- when I worked with the more talented members of the SQA staff, they were definitely able to more thoroughly test the code that I produced. There was even one or two occasions in which a question posed to me by the SQA staff caused me to radically change the product that I worked on, because it turned out that my original design was flawed.
A few jobs later I again found myself working in a "throw it over the wall" shop. This time I was working in an incredibly intense environment, complete with aggressive schedules and incomplete requirements. Still, I took the time to establish a good relationship with the SQA staff, and I even wrote test tools for the SQA staff so that they could better test out my code. When the deadline came and the product shipped, I was pretty happy that my part of the product was well tested and performed well in the field. As for the "throw it over the wall" crowd, well, let's just say that there was a maintenance release and a hairy upgrade in the field...
THROW IT OVER THE WALL
In the culture of this place, the ultra-smart software engineers sat on one side of an imaginary wall, and the not-very-bright SQA staff sat on the other side of the wall. "Throw it over the wall" was the derisive phrase that the software organization used when it wanted to get the SQA organization to test some shiny and new software trinket that they produced. In general, the relationship between the software engineers and the SQA staff was not good.
I really wasn't wild about this dynamic. I mean, let's be honest: there were people of all abilities in both groups....just like at every other company.
The thing that bothered me about the "throw it over the wall" dynamic that went on at this place was that all this culture did was serve to demoralize the SQA staff. Furthermore, "throw it over the wall" frequently meant "give the SQA staff the software with very little documentation -- very little in the way of requirements, functional specifications, etc.". Sometimes I had no idea how the SQA team tested out the final product. I could tell that this situation bugged the more talented members of the SQA staff a lot.
There was very little I could do to change the dynamic at this place. For the period of time that I worked there, I at least tried to treat the SQA staff that I worked with as if they were partners in creating the product that we were all supposed to be creating. The results of this were generally positive -- when I worked with the more talented members of the SQA staff, they were definitely able to more thoroughly test the code that I produced. There was even one or two occasions in which a question posed to me by the SQA staff caused me to radically change the product that I worked on, because it turned out that my original design was flawed.
A few jobs later I again found myself working in a "throw it over the wall" shop. This time I was working in an incredibly intense environment, complete with aggressive schedules and incomplete requirements. Still, I took the time to establish a good relationship with the SQA staff, and I even wrote test tools for the SQA staff so that they could better test out my code. When the deadline came and the product shipped, I was pretty happy that my part of the product was well tested and performed well in the field. As for the "throw it over the wall" crowd, well, let's just say that there was a maintenance release and a hairy upgrade in the field...
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