I've been super busy with everything recently and haven't had a chance to update my blog in forever. (That also might be because I haven't actually done much software / sysadmin related stuff in quite some time -- not entirely true, but we'll get into that later). Where've I been? Caught up in projects and real life. Between working on SocialGamer, attempting to pick up some random contracts here and there, and my recent real life adventures, there's not been much time left over for blogging or the Internet at all (outside of what I've been doing; read further).
Real Life
So I finally got a life. This is partially attributed to me finally taking steps to doing fun real life stuff and partially due to having a girlfriend now who actually likes doing fun real life stuff. We've gone on more hiking / rock climbing / random drives around abandoned towns in the past two weeks than I've been on in the past three years. It's quite fun, and makes me realize how much I've missed in the past few years since I've been back in the US. This past weekend, we drove out to Sam's Point in Ellenville, but the trails were so packed (and you have to pay to get in) that we decided we'd try to find something else. On the way back down the mountain, we saw some random place marked for hiking, so we pulled over and walked down a bit, but it turned out there really wasn't any kind of trail.
So we continued our drive out to the middle of nowhere, trying to find some house on the top of a mountain. We never found the house, but we found the weirdest community I've ever seen anywhere. There was this mix of Jewish communities (which were all fenced in and run down, which was odd to see, since it reminded me a lot of Nazi-style ghettos), (probably) million dollar estates (most were for sale, so perhaps they're no longer of such value) and trailer parks. There were burned down / abandoned community centers that had remnants of swimming pools, basketball courts, and tennis courts... and then half a mile down the road, there'd be this shoddy community with an outdoor basketball court that looked better maintained than any of the houses surrounding it. Crazy.
Down one of these roads, we found a `general purpose' nature area. Upon walking down the `trail' (or what may more aptly be described as `area that looked most walked over' since there was no trail to speak of), immediately apparent were an empty mini-keg of Heineken, a bucket and beer bottles, all shattered and riddled with bulletholes, as well as some empty 12 gauge shotgun cartridges. We walked farther into the woods, finding some spectacularly colored leaves on the ground. We found this stone wall running through the middle of the woods. Apparently these sorts of constructions exist all over the place in this area; I'd never really seen them before, and I still wonder the stories behind the walls. What were they marking? When were they built? Who built them?
After walking for perhaps a quarter of a mile into the woods, we thought it best to continue back to the car since:
Projects
So we continued our drive out to the middle of nowhere, trying to find some house on the top of a mountain. We never found the house, but we found the weirdest community I've ever seen anywhere. There was this mix of Jewish communities (which were all fenced in and run down, which was odd to see, since it reminded me a lot of Nazi-style ghettos), (probably) million dollar estates (most were for sale, so perhaps they're no longer of such value) and trailer parks. There were burned down / abandoned community centers that had remnants of swimming pools, basketball courts, and tennis courts... and then half a mile down the road, there'd be this shoddy community with an outdoor basketball court that looked better maintained than any of the houses surrounding it. Crazy.
Down one of these roads, we found a `general purpose' nature area. Upon walking down the `trail' (or what may more aptly be described as `area that looked most walked over' since there was no trail to speak of), immediately apparent were an empty mini-keg of Heineken, a bucket and beer bottles, all shattered and riddled with bulletholes, as well as some empty 12 gauge shotgun cartridges. We walked farther into the woods, finding some spectacularly colored leaves on the ground. We found this stone wall running through the middle of the woods. Apparently these sorts of constructions exist all over the place in this area; I'd never really seen them before, and I still wonder the stories behind the walls. What were they marking? When were they built? Who built them?
After walking for perhaps a quarter of a mile into the woods, we thought it best to continue back to the car since:
- There was no trail and we'd probably get lost if we went too much further, and
- The area was so skeevy, we didn't really trust the car being left alone for too long.
Projects
I've been working the last couple months pretty much non-stop on promoting a website I created called SocialGamer. The idea is to have a social networking community for gamers of all types, be they video gamers, board gamers, or active gamers (paintball, footbag (Hacky Sack), frisbee) or otherwise. This is difficult because I've run out of money to piddle around with a website for 80 hours a week. We're trying to get the site migrated over to Django, which would be cool, because that would make it much easier to maintain most of the content on the site, as well as to extend the site in the future. I'm pessimistic about the amount of time I'm going to be able to put into the site in the upcoming month or two (or even in the long term). This is disappointing, because many people love the site. I may hold a fundraiser for it starting in November, but I'm not sure that much is going to come out of that. Either way, that's not going to give me any more time to work on it given I have two upcoming job interviews, will likely have to move for both of the jobs if I get them, and I also have an upcoming contract.
The contract is to develop a browser plugin for an x264 encoder that can stream via RTMP to a Flash Media Server. This plugin must work on FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera and must target Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X (10.5). The funny thing about this is that the Mac port looks like the easiest. Quicktime can open cameras and capture devices and encode into x264 natively. So we looked at DirectShow. What a hassle that is!
DirectShow requires you to open a DirectShow device, assemble a bunch of filters for it, and then do whatever with audio / video. In the end, it looks doable, but it's going to be a lot more work than the OS X version which gives you a single, encoded A/V stream. The DirectShow version, we're going to have to do our own A/V syncing! (Why it cannot do this for us is beyond my imagination).
On top of that, it's going to be interesting to code up an NPAPI plugin for two different operating systems and STILL have to code up an ActiveX plugin for Windows. Why in the world did MS remove NPAPI support from MSIE? *Sigh*.
I'll post more about DirectShow weirdness as I get past various issues, I'm sure.
Outro
The contract is to develop a browser plugin for an x264 encoder that can stream via RTMP to a Flash Media Server. This plugin must work on FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera and must target Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X (10.5). The funny thing about this is that the Mac port looks like the easiest. Quicktime can open cameras and capture devices and encode into x264 natively. So we looked at DirectShow. What a hassle that is!
DirectShow requires you to open a DirectShow device, assemble a bunch of filters for it, and then do whatever with audio / video. In the end, it looks doable, but it's going to be a lot more work than the OS X version which gives you a single, encoded A/V stream. The DirectShow version, we're going to have to do our own A/V syncing! (Why it cannot do this for us is beyond my imagination).
On top of that, it's going to be interesting to code up an NPAPI plugin for two different operating systems and STILL have to code up an ActiveX plugin for Windows. Why in the world did MS remove NPAPI support from MSIE? *Sigh*.
I'll post more about DirectShow weirdness as I get past various issues, I'm sure.
Outro
That's about it, but it's enough to keep anybody busy 168 hours per week. To put my case in point a little better, I set up some water to boil for some noodles midway through this blog entry. I then spent 15 minutes forgetting that it was boiling. Off to fix my noodles and continue on with my various stuff. Gotta prepare for that big interview tomorrow!
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