Going Backward to go Forward

Yesterday I did a blog post. I did not advertise it. It just did not feel right. I took it down and this is its replacement. It was long. It was too much soapbox, although all of these have a soapbox. So the theme now is going backwards to go forward.

The day before yesterday, I finished a piece of functionality for Maze Pseudo that has been on the list for a while. I have done it before in previous incantations of the game. But this time, it worked out differently. The feature actually destabilizes the game and makes it less fun. So what am I going to do? Remove the feature for now and until I can figure out how to make it so that it does not detract from the rest of the game play. This is going backwards to go forwards. I will not delete the feature, just mask it out of the production version.  Yesterday, this was going to have the impact of I would be done with the Apple TV version within the week. That was a inaccurate estimate, because today I am done with it. I have sent the bits that need proofreading to the appropriate people. Once those changes come back, I am already to submit it to Apple.

This also means that I get to focus next week on my next project. It is the project I started years ago, abandoned, revived it a couple weeks ago, and will now try to finally finish it off. So in a sense, I am going backwards to go forwards again. I hope to finish work on it by the end of May or before heading to E3 in June at the latest. After that, I have not decided. There are still four other projects I want to do. Five if you count a non-computer related project I want to figure out how to do.

Yes, here comes the soapbox. But keep reading. It is not that bad. Two days ago was national tell a story day (April 27). I only know this because of an old friend's blog post I read yesterday. Yes, already one day late and now two days late. So my story is going backward, to show that we really have not gone forward.

For me, elementary school was grades K thru 7 and high school was grades 8 thru 12. I did not have a middle school and high school had 5 years instead of the normal 4 years. In 7th grade, the school system gave us standardized tests for the various core subjects: math, English, science, and the like. The test results were used to place us into an appropriate level core class.  For math, science, and English, I was placed in the on-level group.

In 8th and 9th grades, I had the same math teacher. She and I were definitely not on the same page. I do not remember the reason at the time, but I refused to do home work or participate in class. It was not that I did not like or respect her. I just did not want to do the work. When tests came around, I routinely got 100% on them. I think there was even a test where I got something marked wrong that turned out to be wrong on her test key and that my answer was correct. She wrote notes to my mom. She called her. I think there were even a couple discussions with councilors and principles. Yea, it was bad. Even when I did my homework, I would not turn it in.  She could not bring herself to fail me, even though the zeros for class work said she should. I obviously knew the material.

At some point, she figured out that I was in the wrong level and told me that. Unfortunately, there was no way to put me into the right level because they had already moved too far ahead. Looking backwards, I was bored; very bored and frustrated. At some point, she just let me be. A willful teenager is hard enough to manage as it is. And here all of my high school years were going to be spent in the wrong level of math. Each math teacher after that knew this. They did the best they could for me.

But all of that is an effect. As far as I know, nobody actually determined the cause. In hindsight, I am guessing that something went wrong with the standardized 7th grade math test. It was one of those number 2 pencil shade the boxes tests. I probably skipped a question or answered one twice and got the boxes marked wrong. I think that the 7th grade teachers had an impact on placement. But if I did poorly enough, the math teacher would have only been able to put me in one higher level, not two. Regardless of what happened on the test, it was the test that placed me wrong.

I hate standardized testing. The best you can hope to know is that someone is good at taking a standardized test for a particular subject. This only comes to mind as I see my teacher friends congratulating their students on getting through two weeks of testing. That is sad to me. Here 40 years later, we are still using standardized testing to determine the fate of someone's future, including teachers and schools. Parents are supposed to have the option to opt their children out of testing. School systems do not make that easy. Teachers cannot discourage the testing for fear of loosing their jobs.  It is federal money on the line.

For me, it was not until my brief period of attempting college late in life that I realized I actually enjoy learning. Why could I have not gotten that in primary school? Education should be teaching children to love learning. Knowledge will come naturally from that base.

Debunking Facebook

Yes, it's been a couple weeks. First there was spring break, where I was only working half days. Then the past two weeks have been where I have been working 10-12 hour days. No problem, just into what I am doing. That is porting Maze Pseudo to work on the Apple TV. The tasks I started with have been easy. It has been the gotchas along the way that slow me down. Like artwork. To get something already functional on iOS to work on Apple TV required me making between 8 and 18 sets of 3 images. These are the new parallax images used for all the icons. I should have done 18 sets. I did 8. Took me two days. And they are not that good. Anyway, my task list has less than two weeks left.

Facebook doesn't understand when you change your habits very well. About 6 months ago, I unfollowed most news sites. Just after the beginning of the year, I started tracking how much time I was spending with Facebook a day "Catching Up With The World". About 2 months ago, I did another large unfollowing of most of the things I was previously. I spent a week looking at what a particular feed was posting. If it was not engage me a lot, I unfollowed. Do not worry, I did not unfollow friends. In fact, it is family and friends postings that I wanted to be sure I was still seeing. I still have things that I follow because they engage me. At some point, I moved to only looking at Facebook once a day. It used to be 2 or more longer sessions.

All of these shifts have not had a dramatic impact on time spent. Beginning of the year is around 2 hours a day and now it varies more but usually around an hour. What this says to me is that I am still engaging (reading links, watching videos) for about the same amount. I have also noticed that I see more things people like or comment on than before. Those I do not want to see. I wish we still had the option to turn them off. Share something if it is worthy of sharing. Like, err React, is for communicating back to the poster. I don't really care if a million people Haha something. There is also sharing too much or being to myopic in your posts. Twenty thousand cat videos gets you none of them watched or many of your other posts even looked at.

There are a couple of interesting things that have occurred. Right now, I do not have a real source of general news. I only see what people are posting/talking about. Top of that list is famous people dying. I tend to find out with a lag. But then that is all I see. Other news, like flooding in Texas is almost non-existent. Wait, there was flooding in Texas? Must not have been all that important in comparison to Prince. Prince is bigger than Texas. *nods knowingly to self*

Another interesting thing is politics. You would think it would overwhelm my feed. It actually doesn't. Most things posted are thoughtful or funny. Yes, there is the occasional spammer. I have friends that are obviously in most of the major camps. Except Cruz. I get nothing from Cruz people. Maybe Cruz people is an urban myth.

Lack of news doesn't seem to bother me. I do not stress about things I have no control over. I wish I had a candidate. I wish Facebook gave better controls over content. I want more meaningful unique commentary on the world! That or cat videos (apparently).

All The Printers Have Died

An almost funny thing happened to me yesterday: I discovered that we no longer have a working printer. That is not the funny part. I only discovered this when I was enabling some two-factor security and one of the steps required me to print a code. Yes, actually required me to print something that was equivalent to a password. Passwords are not supposed to be written down. That defeats the whole purpose of passwords.

We actually have two functioning printers. How do I know? Because I just bought cartridges for both of them to make them work. A couple weeks ago, I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 from Windows 7. Did it tell me then that the printer I had attached was not going to work? Nope. Didn't tell me anything until I tried to print to it from my Mac. Yes, the Mac speaks to that printer, but only when it can do so through another computer. That other computer, my PC, no longer speaks to that printer. The other printer worked with Windows XP and worked somewhat with my Mac. But when I went to try it, it decided that printing only some of the colors on the page was appropriate. Specifically, the color for the border and the color for the text saying you should keep this paper in a safe place. Forget anything else that was needed.

Both printer manufacturers have refused to build new drivers for the printers, despite the fact that both still sell new cartridges. Being a software developer, I wonder why it is not just someone needs to push a button to compile a new driver. Perhaps do a couple tweaks to meet new Windows or OS X demands. How much more complicated can printer driver technology get? Oh, Apple is releasing a new color, which means all the existing color printers won't work. Microsoft will shortly be scrabbling to make a faux color of the same color to keep up. Microsoft being Microsoft will make 10 shades of it that only a lithographer can see the difference between.

This all got me to thinking: 50 years ago, we were not going to need paper any more in 10 years and all the paper trees were going to be gone anyway. Maybe it was 40 years ago in 15 years. No, that does not make sense. Perhaps it was 30 years ago in 20 years. Well, shoot, so much for predicting the past. In the 1980s, computers actually caused us to use more paper than ever before.

After doing some research, I have discovered that the Paper Manufacturers have Lobbyists. Yes, Paper Pushers Pushing Paper. Apparently it is a misconception as to what the Paper Pushing Lobbyists do. It is not fighting to allow Paper Production Plants to Produce Pollution. It actually is to get congress to create a Anti Paperless Economy Society or APES for short. APES forces computer hardware and software manufacturers to perpetuate the requirement for paper. The U.S. Post Office exists only to deliver paper in various varieties. Packages wrapped in paper. Paper charging you for paper. Paper to convince you to buy more paper. Our landfills are overflowing with PAPER! Oh, yes, that is right, you recycle paper. You know what happens to recycled paper? Straight to the dump. Think of all the paperless children in China with nothing to draw on.

Meh.

Maze Pseudo has passed the App Store review, but releasing it on Spring Fools Day seems wrong. Perhaps I will remember to do it tomorrow. Does mean that I will wrap my current old project up for a couple weeks while I go back to Maze Pseudo for Apple TV next week. That and buy a new printer and new paper, since I doubt a new printer works with old paper. Can't teach Old Paper New Tricks.