By Kevin Marshall on Sep 5 2008
Well the NFL season kicked off last night, and though I swore up, down, left and right that I would not be running the stats service again this year - there I was, once again, hacking away feverishly as the game started trying to work out last minute kinks and issues.
So once again I know where that "nice guys finish last" line feels like. Still, I would rather be the nice guy, do the right thing, and go to bed each night feeling good about myself than have a little more extra cash in my pocket.
Anyway, aside from that last minute stats crunch, I'm doing a ton of behind the scenes things on BotFu right now. Some of it's tech related stuff, some of it's idea collection and dumping, and some of it's just trying to build a core team and passion around the idea(s). That last part (getting a team) has been the area I've felt like I've been missing for the past few years as I bounce between all my personal projects trying to get one to "hit". So far, for botfu, it's going really well though...so my hopes are currently quite high.
I have a lot to share about the various parts that are coming together behind the scenes on botfu, but as usual, I don't have the time to share it all right now...so instead, I'm just going to say that there's a lot of action and that I'll be updating you on it very soon I promise.
Outside of all of this, I'm also going to be meeting with a few people on Monday about a fubnub.com related idea that I think could prove to be very interesting. If nothing else, I think it's going to be fun to get in a room with the people Charlie pulled together and white board some ideas. So you can probably expect at least a little something from that experience to be thrown here next week too.
Now I guess I better get back to cleaning up the stats systems, building out botfu, improving fubnub, consulting for reviews.com and oh yeah, that day job thing at Bowker. When you look at my to-do list, you would probably think I'm pulling in some big bucks eh? Then you refer back to the top of this post and remember that 'nice guy' thing...and you gotta feel just a little sad for me don't you? Ah, but some day...some day...some day...
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By Kevin Marshall on Sep 4 2008
Well I'm way off track on doing a regular post around here aren't I!? I'm hoping that it's just a result of me being out of town for a few days, but the reality is more likely that I'm just getting lazy!
Anyway, I actually do have a few interesting things going on right now that I can share:
1. I thought I was done offering statsfeed services (at least for this year) but it turns out that I forgot to inform one of my clients about the shut down and now they don't really have time (or money) to find another option. Being the nice (sucker) that I am, I've decided to continue the service for them...of course the real rub of it all is that I've already turned away all my other clients (so I'm now going to do the work, but for a lot less money than I could have been). Being a nice guy in business really does bite you in the butt sometimes (but at least I can sleep at night knowing I'm doing the right thing).
2. As we try to get the new BotFu idea together we were finding it hard to keep up with our own ideas and plans...so I grabbed a copy of phpwiki and slappped it behind some basic auth. for us to use as a collection spot. I don't know how popular phpwiki is, but I have to say in my opinion it's pretty junky! I've already had to spend a little time tweaking all the code to work (and look) just the way I want...nothing too hard or too bad, but it seems like there should be more features already built in for such simple software (which makes me think it's not all that popular of software).
3. Today is my oldest son's first day of Kindergarten! And I'm getting yelled out to help get everyone out the door...so I better stop goofing off on here and get to helping!
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By Kevin Marshall on Sep 2 2008
Well I finally made it back from my annual New Orleans trip...I say annual, because it's supposed to be an annual thing on Labor Day weekend...but three years ago I couldn't go because Katrina hit the weekend before...last year was fine...and this year, Gustauv decided to kick me out early. That's not much of an annual event after all!
Anyway to briefly recap the adventure...I left my house in NJ Friday around 10:00 am...after a day of airports and delays (thanks Dallas), I landed in New Orleans around 7 pm Friday night. I got my rental car and headed to my friend Corey's place in Houma (about an hour away).
Friday night was fairly normal - ie. we all drank heavily and mostly trash talked last season and took a guess at how the picks would fall the next day (the weekend is built around a fantasy football draft we do every year)...I think I was the last to go to bed that night, and that was around 2 am.
As is usual when I'm at someone else's house, I didn't get much sleep...I woke up around 7 a.m. and since my friend Heath was up to, we decided to head to iHop for some quick breakfast.
Now I haven't really mentioned it, but of course everyone there was paying close attention to the developing huricane...and since it was looking like we were going to have to evacuate before too long, the draft time was moved up from noon to 10am Sat. morning (as was the LSU game)...so after breakfast, we headed back to the house, and did the draft.
By that point, the news had reported the airport was going to close by 6pm Sunday night...my ticket to fly out was for 6am Monday morning...so that was going to be a problem...I called the airline and was able to get my ticket changed, but the only thing they had was for Sunday at 3:30 pm...I took it, but I was a bit concerned that the flight would be delayed and I would be stuck. I also wasn't too sure about making my hosts stick around that long while they waited for me to leave (I felt like they needed to get their things and get going).
Since my friend Heath was going to be driving to Atlanta by himself anyway...I hoped onto priceline and orbitz to see what kind of tickets I could get...and as luck would have it I found a one-way ticket from ATL to Newark for just $150.00...so I jumped on it and my friend and I decided not to waste any time...we got in our cars and on the road by 3:00 pm.
We had to go by the airport first to return my car rental...and that same drive that took me a little under an hour the night before now took us about 3 hours! That should have been a tip off...but hey we were still tired from the night before and clearly not thinking straight.
Anyway, long story short, the trip from New Orleans to Atlanta - a trip that should take around 7 or 8 hours - took us 21 straight on-road hours!
Along the way there were lots of little adventures and experiences...but I'm way behind on work thanks to my weekend of 'fun'...so I better get to work, and save the rest of the details for another day!
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By Kevin Marshall on Aug 27 2008
I spent awhile today (and tonight) implementing 'items' into BotFu. The eventual idea is that you'll be able to buy (with BotFu credits) all kinds of items for your BotFu characters.
Some of these items will allow you to do things like recover life points in fights, some will give you special powers from time to time, and some will just be total bling. You'll also be able to trade, sell, and gift all these items within the BotFu world.
The funny thing about doing this type of stuff is that people usually think it's the technical bits of building this type of thing that is hard...it's not.
It's the flushing out of every scenario, of every detail, that's the tricky part of this type of thing.
So far I've implemented an admin tool that allows those of us behind the scenes to manage the 'item' inventory (create/edit and adjust quantity)...and I've implemented the ability to purchase items. I still have to work on the whole 'use an item' part, but that'll be soon (I promise).
On a top level, it seems easy enough to work this stuff in...but when you sit down and think about it for a minute or two, you start to realize that you've got to worry about things like "what if they don't have enough credits?", "what if we don't have enough inventory?", "what if they have some credits, but not enough to buy all that they want?"...and a million other scenarios.
It can quickly explode into a massive project...but honestly, for me, this is a BIG part of what I like about development...scenario thinking and problem solving.
Which isn't to say I'm any good at it, but it is fun for me none the less...you'll have to wait until the system is released before you can judge for yourself if I'm getting it right.
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By Kevin Marshall on Aug 26 2008
A little more action going on with BotFu today...again most of which is behind the scenes and not all that interesting to share right now...but I did manage to get a new feature to BotFu fight out...
Now, when you KO another fighter, you earn the right to change their fighter alias and logo. And they are locked out of changing the alias or logo themselves until they KO another fighter!
While I was at it, I threw in a few special stipulations...you can't change an alias or logo for a bot...and to get control of your own settings back, you must first knock out another 'real' fighter (ie. not a bot).
Really it's a subtle little game feature, but I think it's the type of thing that can help make the game really addictive and social...at least I know I'm going to be having some fun with it the next few days.
The other somewhat big thing I did tonight was to re-organize all the source code files...even though I had been attempting to keep a solid organization from the start of this project, it's inevitable that as features and your code base grow (in unplanned ways), you are probably going to need to do some reorganization.
In this case, I thought it was best to bite the bullet now before I let it get too much further out of hand...and actually I wanted to get somethings in shape before we started putting the fresh new skin on the site (which I'm hoping is something we are going to start tackling within the next week or so).
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