Computers & Programming

I don’t have time to do it now but I’m looking forward to writing up a description of the things I’m learning using the SSE2 instructions. One thing I see already is that making an 8 item pipeline and operating on 8 items in parallel only seems to…

#define MYMAX( a, b, c ) ( c = ( a & ~( ( a – b ) >> 31 ) ) | ( b & ( ( a – b ) >> 31 ) ) ) An interesting thing that can be done is this: #define MYMAX(…

I found a bug in IE 8 related to showing and hiding div elements. I have some simply JavaScript code that runs when a button the page it clicked. <input class=”optionsbutton” type=”button” name=”ButtonHide” value=”Show” OnClick=”showoptions( true )”/> The showoptions function is quite simple as are the functions it…

Until the train game code is working well enough to play an actual game, I’m tempted to do no 3D work. I’ll need an interim user interface and so far, that has not been a problem. It has not been a problem because there has been no real…

I thought that maybe my train game should look a little better. I changed the timer callback to be fast enough that a 40 car train took 100% of one CPU to position and move. It looks nice and the rubber-banding when dragging the track laying took looks…

First, I want to ignore a mouse button click when my window is in the background. I want the Window to become active and come to the front but I don’t want a mouse message about it. Microsoft does some really odd things. I found is that there…

I was experimenting last week with handling the coupler distance between train cars and found something interesting. In the picture above, you can clearly see the issue related to how a train car sits on a curved piece of track. The issue is that the linear distance between…

User Stories I was reading about SCRUM or Scrum last night. I would love to get a chance to work on a project using Agile development methods. The collaboration aspect is appealing as is the idea of getting usable code working quickly seems like a great idea and…

Taking on a big project alone is tricky. I can spend an hour or two per night working on the train game and it takes me a week to make any real progress. I also have spent a few weekend days working all day but that’s because I’m…

I thought that I’d write a little about a scheme I use to avoid constant path finding work in the train game. First, a status report. Coupling and decoupling are working. I had a problem with decoupling where the orientation of the “train” when a new string of…