tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38426453514517155532011-04-21T14:48:35.160-04:00The quasi-professional blog of A. Chapin, chronicling thoughts and discoveries in the world of code development, technology, and game design.A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.comBlogger351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-85318393939098827292009-05-12T01:06:00.002-04:002009-05-12T01:10:51.356-04:00

I realized it's been almost 2 months since I posted here, sorry about that! Here's what I've been up to! Circle Circle Dot Dot - Game 2 for my Experimental Game Design Class This was the second game for my experimental gaming class. From the concept of "Repulsion". Game 1 for my Experimental Game Design Class This was the second game for my experimental gaming class. From the concept of "

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-84730480189331243322009-03-03T12:50:00.003-05:002009-03-03T12:52:20.671-05:00

While I intend to continue posting to this blog, I have a new blog over at kavwoosh.com! It is primarily going to focus on games and game design, while this blog will stay at a more technical "i-had-this-problem-and-did-this" level. Kavwoosh will also focus on my professional activities, so keep an eye out!

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-13154837093331409472009-02-27T15:17:00.003-05:002009-02-27T15:39:07.583-05:00

Just a quick note on an issue I ran into today.When using MySql, if you have a query that looks like this:Select A, BFrom tablewhere A in (Select C, D From AnotherTable)Even when the subquery returns a very small resultset, the overall query will slow to a crawl, if it completes at all. This is because of how mysql handles the "in" statement. The only way to really get around it is just to join

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-50978844785037610632009-02-23T21:08:00.004-05:002009-02-23T21:27:32.535-05:00

I was just messing around with some HTML/CSS/Javascript stuff the other day, and came up with something kind of awesome. It's a div that hides until it has the mouse placed over it, and then hides again when the mouse leaves. It's very similar to a hiding toolbar, and could be very useful if applied correctly.Due to its ability to be present, although mainly unseen, it would be particularly

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-24756160634631936472009-02-04T00:21:00.003-05:002009-02-04T00:34:14.955-05:00

It's been a while since I posted, I know, but I've been busy. Here's one of the things that's been occupying my time. I worked up a 2d top-down collecting game demo for the Drexel Game Developer's Group, and a presentation to go along with it. I'm only a week behind schedule for posting it, which is easily attributable to my laziness.Here's the presentation:And here's a link to the code:You need

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-77065304688416267742008-12-31T16:02:00.005-05:002009-01-14T22:51:53.815-05:00

Happy New Year! It's been a while since I last posted but I've started a few other posts, and will hopefully will be getting them out of the tube sometime soon. When I was younger, my dad, who was in the military, told me that whenever the Army is going to attack a fortified position, they always tried to have a 3 to 1 advantage on the defenders, to minimize their casualties. This is because it

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-53229975078356902312008-12-18T00:05:00.001-05:002008-12-18T00:05:30.149-05:00

In this past week's Zero Punctuation (I should really stop getting my blog ideas from it, I'll work on that), Yahtzee remarked that besides Pirates, Monkeys, and Ninjas, Zombies were perhaps the most popular thing among "nerds". Specifically gaming nerds. Yes, the "legitimacy" of zombies in popular culture is growing every year. What used to just be a cheap horror movie effect has actually been

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-82212773043660009332008-11-25T12:05:00.004-05:002008-11-25T13:27:04.860-05:00

This is actually a topic that I've been thinking about for a while now, going back to a conversation I had at with Corvus Elrod at his "moving to the West Coast" party. We were discussing advertising in games, and generated a lot of interesting points. As a storyteller, it is anathema for him to see anything that pulls a player out of the game experience, and have them thinking about products in

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-90118474675853207582008-11-19T09:54:00.003-05:002008-11-25T13:27:48.497-05:00

I finally had something happen to me at work that I can add to this blog. Oh happy day, I feel as if I might faint.Either way, I've recently become the SSRS "rock star" at my office, where even my bosses are stopping by and asking me questions about how to get their queries/formatting to work. It's not as glamorous as I thought it would be, and the groupies haunt my nightmares, but it's fun...

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-41540232107445461972008-11-17T14:59:00.002-05:002008-11-17T15:06:23.067-05:00

I love thishttp://shouldiusetablesforlayout.com/It was a response to a page that claimed that the average time that a web developer took before abandoning CSS for web layout was 47 minutes. Anyone who has worked with me (or watched me work on a web project) will vouch that I have toiled untold hours of my life away, simply trying to get a CSS layout to work. It warms my heart to see that other

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-62662327786744672772008-10-22T18:47:00.004-04:002008-10-31T09:28:14.103-04:00

This is sort of a game review, but also a discussion about interface design, and the nature of fun in games. I recently purchased Lock's Quest, which was the best Strategy game at E3, which for a DS title, is pretty impressive. It's developers also put out Drawn to Life, a game that I wanted, but never got around to purchasing. Basically, you're a special boy in a war...blah blah blah, the story

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-26072722541212040752008-10-13T12:45:00.002-04:002008-10-13T12:59:23.394-04:00

Hey-o,Just something quick that I figured out today, that I felt warranted sharing. I'm doing some work with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), creating reports for work. Today, I was asked to create one that used a LIKE statement in a WHERE clause where the argument passed to the LIKE statement is a string parameter. The challenge here

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-44562143753505487132008-09-24T22:21:00.009-04:002008-10-01T21:43:00.214-04:00

With the newest version of OpenSocial out, I felt compelled to revisit it, despite the fact that my new job couldn't have me farther from it. A labor of love, some would say, to stay up-to-date on a constantly evolving platform, like trying to hold onto pudding with your bare hands. Anyways, where was I?I'm going to develop an OpenSocial 0.8 app from scratch. Let's get started. First, I need to

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-41393269779131031092008-09-08T22:36:00.005-04:002008-09-08T22:51:59.110-04:00

Hey-oToday was my first day at my new job. Exciting, but nothing notable yet. Hence, this is a relatively shorter entry.Anyways, I was playing around with HTML and CSS again, putting together a chess/checkers-style board with HTML and CSS, and found another browser inconsistency.I have a 4x4 grid of alternating white and black tiles. The tiles are arranged in rows, and there are tokens that are

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-82787628062417724232008-08-18T16:56:00.005-04:002008-08-18T17:09:20.018-04:00

I did a freelance gig recently that required me to do some HTML/CSS. Like all web tasks, one of the primary concerns was browser compatibility. After several hours of cursing at IE and Firefox, I found a good php script that reliably detected browser, so I used that, but doing that always feels like cheating, so I'm going to be spending some time in the coming months playing around with CSS and

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-2017775083129874612008-08-07T15:24:00.001-04:002008-08-07T15:26:02.387-04:00

Apparently, my blog is the top hit for the search "add hidden fields programmatically" on Google.Hooray!Welcome everyone who's looking for how to add hidden fields programmatically. Please leave comments as to whether or not you found my entry useful!

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-8590447038648817292008-07-28T16:55:00.002-04:002008-07-30T16:11:10.429-04:00

Again, here's a new link to my latest project. http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~asc38/Projects/CdlC/I think it's actually pretty fun, so I hope you try it out.The only major issue left to tackle is the high score board. When the game ends, you can submit your score to the online scoreboard (I'm currently in first place, go figure.) It was a chance for me to play around with flash's internet

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-20387105136131473632008-07-09T21:49:00.007-04:002008-07-22T21:03:12.827-04:00

I think this is probably my first post ever that contains any actual coding in it, and frankly, I'm a little scared. This is such foreign territory for me, I don't know where to start.So I'll start with a link. http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~asc38/Projects/Invaders/Yes, it is in flash. I feel dirty with this being the first "complete" program I post, but we all have our flaws. I actually haven't paid

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-20758019615945966562008-06-30T18:05:00.003-04:002008-07-09T16:39:47.404-04:00

One of my current favorite web video series at the moment is The Escapist's Zero Punctuation. Ben Croshaw definitely has his own brand of humor, but I feel the need to comment on one of his common criticisms: grinding for inordinate amounts of time. First, a definition.Grind (v): To repeatedly perform an identical action or sequence of actions in a game solely for the purposes of advancement

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-43554539316957153082008-06-25T12:14:00.006-04:002008-06-25T12:48:09.729-04:00

I could apologize for this being the first post in two months, but I won't. This is my third rewrite, mostly due to my incompetence, but frankly it's beginning to wear thinly on me.I'm currently taking a game design course at my university along with two of my friends. Woo and yay. A class that actually may have some bearing on what I might actually do with my life. Don't get me wrong, but I

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-7148664230928038162008-04-17T12:07:00.003-04:002008-04-17T12:19:56.122-04:00

I went to a meeting for my university's local game dev group yesterday. The discussed topic was "What To Do Break Into The Game Industry." There were some helpful hints as to languages, networking events and the like, but one point that the speakers drove home (and I felt was VERY important) was this:Make GamesIt's so simple, but a lot of people, and not just those in the game development field,

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-68869085562050353212008-04-09T20:11:00.004-04:002008-04-09T20:24:12.358-04:00

"When designing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex."Yes, it's a little more than we'd actually want to think about our users, but replace the more graphic bit with "leaving work on-time", "playing with their children", or "having the information they need before the big meeting", and

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-82304032943297929042008-03-25T16:17:00.004-04:002008-03-25T16:38:31.862-04:00

I could explain why I haven't posted in a while, but I'm not going to. Anyways...I still recieve the dead-tree version of Wired magazine, even though with how long it takes to get to me all the content is online, anda few of their stories really got me thinking. In one camp, there are the articles about how open-ness an freedom is the "new wave" and how businesses are doing well by "opening up."

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-10129980024671471692008-02-27T11:09:00.004-05:002008-02-27T11:25:44.368-05:00

If you're using windows (and according to Google analyitcs, you most likely are,) and you're like me, your desktop has a lot of stuff on it. Not clutter, no, these are important things that you use often, like web browsers, ftp/ssh clients, and files/folders that have important information that you use often. Well, that, plus all the other junk you just saved to the desktop because it was the

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-55996114727190915672008-02-25T13:23:00.003-05:002008-02-25T13:39:29.549-05:00

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I took a trip up to New York for an OpenSocial Hackathon (which I'll discuss in a later post,) but I just had this thought mulling around my head and felt like writing it down.I probably use my media player (WMP, Songbird, AmaroK, etc) more than any other program on my computer. No matter what I'm doing (coding, web-surfing, doc writing, or all three,)

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-19737560098173146042008-01-24T15:06:00.000-05:002008-01-24T15:35:41.127-05:00

Unless you've had your head buried in the sand for the last two weeks, you've heard about Apple's new MacBook Air, the super-slim notebook that apparently looks really cool. Apparently there were some features left out in order to slim it down. Such as...Normal port set, including EthernetAn optical drive (unless you want to use RemoteDisc, which is still pretty useless)A changeable batteryNow,

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-7304647509566931312008-01-23T16:02:00.000-05:002008-01-23T16:18:50.638-05:00

I have a big post I'm working on about the Microsoft Sync Framework, but I'm working on some UI mockups right now, and realized that I have something to rant about.In general, I HATE scrollbars. I hate including them in my UI designs, because in my mind, they represent a failure to display all the necessary information in a neat, compact manner. Don't get me wrong, in many instances, they're

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-83266819169892025112008-01-18T11:50:00.000-05:002008-01-18T12:06:50.397-05:00

One of the things that's always bothered me about video games is that they're usually very restrictive. You have to have X platform, Y controller, give money to Z publisher. Personally, I look at the Xbox 360 and PC (in particular,) and say "why can't they play games together." I bought Team Fortress 2 for my PC, and can't play with people on XBox live. I know a solid bit of that is because

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-36559708399415792062008-01-08T16:00:00.000-05:002008-01-22T16:08:09.858-05:00

I know I've been bad. The holidays, projects I shouldn't be blogging about, and my shiny new Xbox 360 have been the major contributors to falling off my "one post a week" horse. Either way, I should be back on said horse, and riding back into the Wild Blogtier. Let's start rustling.Since I'm still (technically) a student, many of my fond memories are from my younger years, where homework that

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-30606485112569883472007-12-28T11:25:00.000-05:002007-12-28T11:46:41.143-05:00

Sorry it's taken so long to get another post up. The holidays, and the fact that I have a major project due tuesday, have been keeping me from my beloved blogzorz.This is just something I ran across in my project, it stumped me for about 10 minutes, so I did a search for it, and nothing I saw explained it adequately, or even loaded properly. So here's what I came up with.I need to add several

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-47369507407355588912007-12-14T15:34:00.000-05:002007-12-14T15:59:40.601-05:00

This is a much shorter post than the others have been, but I don't think that's going to be too terrible. ;-PAnyways, I'm also working on integration with our product with Picnik, and just recently resolved an issue with them. Our images are (or will be) hosted with Amazon's S3 service (which is wicked sweet, if you know how to use it,) and we use secure URLs to access them, along with all the

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-49170172225108638692007-12-12T09:34:00.001-05:002008-09-24T22:18:01.778-04:00

NOTE: This code and post was written for an older version of Opensocial. I make no guarantees as to it's validity in later versions.I know I missed my post last week, but I plan to make up for it with two this week. I've been working on some stuff that I shouldn't be blogging about (company secrets, nothing major, I just have to keep it hush-hush) for the past week, hence nothing major to talk

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-21776978717395794762007-11-28T09:16:00.001-05:002008-09-24T22:18:36.099-04:00

NOTE: This code and post was written for an older version of Opensocial. I make no guarantees as to it's validity in later versions.There are four APIs to opensocial: Javascript, Activities, People, and Persistence. The last three haven't been released yet, but the Javascript one already implements some of the features that they will support. For example. the People API will let you retrieve a

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-84645524835663745712007-11-26T13:51:00.001-05:002008-09-24T22:18:56.076-04:00

NOTE: This code and post was written for an older version of Opensocial. I make no guarantees as to it's validity in later versions.Just a quick note: I'm going to set a goal for myself to do at least one blog post per week. It will be of a decent length, and not filler in any way, shape, or form. One of my biggest dislikes of the blogosphere is that people post the most useless stuff. I'm going

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842645351451715553.post-73403904545171690412007-11-20T15:58:00.000-05:002007-11-20T16:35:19.510-05:00

Greetings, Blogosphere.This is the quasi-professional blog of Aaron Chapin.The title is taken from a quote I found on the internet."A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." - Mitch RadcliffeI do not advocate violence, drinking, or either of the two in conjunction to computing, but this blog is going

A. Chapinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05391088486401542086noreply@blogger.com0