Blog of Ortz

I have a simple question about XNA tutorials. Why is everyone sparing newbies OO? Nearly every article and tutorial I see uses very little, if any, Object Orientation. They’re going to have to learn it anyway. In fact, game programming in XNA is a perfect opportunity to learn it.

Yes, they’re new, but you don’t need to dumb things down. XNA has already been simplified. That is, in fact, what XNA is all about. Because XNA has already made it easier, I think we need to concentrate on making the newbies good programmers instead of making it even easier for them to program. I can understand making the most basic “putting a sprite on the screen” tutorials as simple as possible to just get them started, but in order for them to really take off and get to the point where they no longer rely on tutorials, they HAVE to learn OOP.

Articles need to have OOP. This is even more confusing to me. Even the more advanced articles contain little OOP. Is this just how people program? Maybe it’s just me. When I program, I am obsessed with making everything as OO as possible.

Maybe I’m totally wrong. Maybe I’m just looking at the wrong tutorials. If I am, tell me.

So yesterday my router died. I wasn’t really surprised, it was starting to act strangely. Port forwarding entries would disappear for no reason, even though they were still being forwarded. So my server was down all day yesterday.

On top of that, my connection is screwy today. I disconnect about every 3 minutes. It got me banned from a few channels. Hopefully this won’t last long.

This past Saturday me and the family took a 30 mile trip to the little town of Cameron where they have an antique fair. The town’s 13 antique shops along with 300 other vendors (and food stands) all put their antiques out on tables up and down the side of the highway that runs through town.

About maybe 60% of the things being sold are actually antiques, the rest are things that just happen to be old, and new things made by local craftsmen like rustic tables and porch swings.

It took us about 2 hours to look at everything and we weren’t actually looking at everything. Not only that, we skipped a bunch of vendors. Actually, most of it was boring. There was plenty of cool old stuff to look at though, like old woodworking tools, 50-year-old license plates, Roy Rogers toy guitars. There were also quite a few things that I couldn’t identify at all. I really wish I brought a camera but I misplaced the battery charger for my digital camera, and my dad’s film SLR is pretty heavy. Actually, I didn’t think of bringing one in the first place…

I just had a cheeseburger and some fries for lunch, although the fries were really good. I got mine straight out of the fryer. I was so starving, though, that I didn’t really care. I can’t even remember what was on my burger. Also, I smelled funnel cake, I saw one person eating funnel cake, but I didn’t see anyone making it!! That was a bummer. Also, they didn’t have any of those cool flavored soft drinks (like Nehis) like they did last time. Another bummer.

So it was fun overall. I’m trying to think of something really cool I saw but I can’t think of anything right now. I guess that would’ve been the advantage of taking pictures.

Oh, I did see a dude in tights and colonial-era clothes.

Okay, I sort of like the idea of podcast. It’s a little more personal than a blog post and maybe a little easier to make (you don’t have to “grammar nazi”-proof your post.) I guess the biggest downsize is that people tend to go off on tangents, plus the chance that someone will say something (not so) funny and you have to listen to 30 seconds of nothing but mind-numbing laughter.

The problem I have with the Natural Selection 2 podcast is the background music. I’m not trying to get my groove on, I’m just trying to listen to them talk, I don’t need them to set the mood. It makes it hard to hear what they’re saying on top of it. If I need background music I have my own music player.

So I finally got with the times and “Feedburned”(?) my feed.

I must say, Feedburner has a really nice interface. Nice use of JS and really nice, simple layout. Not only that, it’s got oodles of tools for you to use. I’ve already used one on my main page in the sidebar.

I put some buttons in the side too. You can click there cause I’m too lazy to paste the link here.

Also, you’ll notice I changed the title of my blog. It’s a little more unique. Sounds cooler anyway.