Chris @ Olstrom (.com)

My birthday is now over.I enjoyed it greatly, being able to spend the day with my family (in the ‘parents and siblings I grew up with’ sense as well as the ‘Me & Melissa & Isabelle‘ sense of things) is always nice. As is traditional, fired up the grill for some hot dogs and hamburgers, despite the rain.

Had a minor incident with the grill, and the fat from the burgers. Fat dripped down into the grill, and started a minor grease fire which grew to be a bit larger than I would consider ideal. Ended up having to remove most of the hamburgers from the grill to remove the source of the fire’s fuel, except for one that had a rather intimidating wall of flame surrounding it. There may have been some infernal influence on those flames, I’m not sure.

Overall, great day, looking forward to the next year of life, fully expecting it to be at even more awesome than previous years (if that’s possible, I’m quite pleased with my life so far). 23 happens to be my lucky number, so we’ll see how that plays into things. ^_^

Start some coursework at BCIT on Monday. 0800-1200 for class, then work from 1215-2015. It’s going to be a long two weeks, I suppose. I expect the local coffee houses will appreciate the extra business.

And now, I must answer the call of sleep.

There are those who hold the view that being self-taught is a disadvantage. As an individual of this sort, my views will be inherently biased. Please forgive me for this, and look past it. If you disagree (or agree) with my rationale, add a comment. I will respond to all comments.

The situation is such that there are advantages to both sides. It is my position that self-taught individuals are more specialized in their chosen areas of expertise, at the cost of versatility.

Consider if you will: the range of exercises most Computer Science students undertake. Many of these are tasks that illustrate a particular concept, and will likely never be (directly) applied to any future work.

Many self-educated individuals will not take the time to study areas outside those that interest them (and why would they?). At the same time, such individuals are not wasting the time they save by not learning otherwise dull concepts. These are replaced with things that capture our attention, and hold it.

There are those who hold the view that those trained through traditional channels (universities, formal training programs, etc) are being ’shaped by the system to be drones’. While I think this is a bit extreme, I agree somewhat, though I think the defining factor is motivation, rather than environment. It just happens that most of those outside of traditional training models (the self-taught) share a common motive: Passion. We thirst for knowledge, and it is this that drives us to expand our understanding of a subject. An individual who enrolls in a training program, or structured study of a field may share this desire, though it can safely be assumed that not all who take a course do it for the knowledge alone. Many undertake such training to secure positions in a related field.

I believe that one who learns something to become employable is setting themselves up to be a drone. The mindset required to know that ‘I spent four years studying to get this job’ puts the individual in a position to be directed. The goal was to get the job, and to fill a specific role.

The self-taught individual is more often driven by passion for their art. Where a classically-trained developer may complete a project to the specfication, the passionate developer is more likely to infuse their work with that extra spark that makes it truly exceptional.

Those trained in a traditional sense are often more versatile than the passionate programmer, and may be stronger in a wider range of tasks, the self-taught developer is often unparalleled in his expertise in a select few areas.

The question I would pose is this: If you required critical brain surgery, who would you rather have do it? The surgeon who is very good at a range of operations? Or a neurosugeon who excels at his chosen field, but only at his chosen field?

Written in response to:

• 
  Who Needs a Computer Science Degree When There’s Wikipedia?
• University versus self-taught

And we’re live with another one. Sometimes I think I take on too many projects. It’s probably true too, but how are we supposed to find out where our limitations are if we don’t push where we think they might be? Overburden yourself, and you’ll soon discover that you can do far more than you gave yourself credit for.

Vista Gamer stems from the fact that my shiny new laptop came with Vista. Now, I’m not a Windows fan. This is plainly clear, but since the laptop that had the hardware I wanted didn’t have an option of not getting Vista, I accepted that I was screwed. And, since I now have a shiny licensed copy of Windows, I may as well use it to play my games. Saves me the hassle of tinkering with Wine… or does it?

I figured it’d be easy. Pop in a game or two, and have some fun. But no. Vista wants to play rough, and not be compatible with several of my games. I’m pleased with the performance of the ones that run, but disappointed that a large number of the online games I’ve wanted to play simply don’t run on Vista. Things like DEP killing nProtect, for example. I can’t fault Vista for that, really. nProtect is an invasive little process, and any half-decent security system should consider it’s behaviour (not the app itself, mind you) to be a threat.

Looking around, I couldn’t find a site around that told me what was compatible and what wasn’t. Sure, people mention things in forums, but I wanted a single place I could find the information. A starting point for my game compatibility research, much like Wikipedia is the starting point for a lot of questions that cross my mind.

Spent a bit of time struggling to find a domain that felt right, and went to bed without an answer. The next day, I checked a few more that struck me during lunch, and to my surprise, vistagamer.com was available (let this be a lesson to all of you “OMG, all the decent .coms are taken!” people. Even if you think it’ll be taken, check. You might be wrong).

So the site’s up and running, looks decent enough. A few games are in the list, and I’m looking for submissions for any experiences others have had with games working or not.

Play games on Vista? Check out Vista Gamer. While we can’t make Vista suck any less for gaming, we can at least know that a game doesn’t work before we waste 3GB of bandwidth downloading it (seriously, these online multiplayer games should have their requirements listed on the site. Even if the game is free, wasted bandwidth doesn’t benefit anyone).

The site layout has been overhauled at Slack/Tux, resulting in a style that aligns better with how I had originally envisioned it. There is still a significant lack of content on the site, something which I intend to correct in the near future. Some upgrades and tweaks have been implemented as well, which should improve the responsiveness of the site.

So I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time. I’ve been writing a game, which I call SimpleGame. It’s basically one game, written in as many languages as I can write it in. I’ve used it primarily as a means of improving my skills with different languages, or learning new ones entirely. It’s always been my intent to share that code, as well.

Considering everything that’s happened with Libertas Infinitum (or the lack of happenings, depending on how you approach it), I wanted to do something to help others with similar visions. I’ll continue with Libertas Infinitum, and while that develops I’d love to see more independant developers start building their dreams.

If anything, now is the best time for new developers to get involved. As the internet has evolved, the potential for collaboration has blossomed into something amazing, and the resources available for small teams are mature and stable: Web-accessible revision control, free distribution channels, and open source development tools and frameworks all serve to lower the barrier to entry, or even eliminate it entirely.

Silent Arcade is a site dedicated to empowering those developers through knowledge. Check it out.