http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cpbSJ308Mc

Ps. I spent a summer putting up drywall during college, but never in such a glamorous location as a new McDonalds

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My wife and I’s weight loss is still going well, I’ve lost 20lbs in 44 days.

We aren’t on any particular diet and we haven’t cut anything out entirely. I use MyFitnessPal.com to track everything I eat, except for one or two days a week, where I go “off the record”. On those days, I’ve found that I still don’t go crazy, which is nice, I feel like I’ve changed my lifestyle, rather than following a fad.

We only have two rules, which are really only guidelines:

1. No alcohol on a school night
2. If we’re going to have dessert, it should be something we’ve made. It just makes it a little more awkward to indulge, and my daughter loves baking, so it works out well.

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Not sure WHAT you’re smoking either Jason – TNG was easily the nest Star Trek series. The original (Kirk) series was “fun” and “lame” in equal portions. TNG certainly had its lame episodes but it had WAY more interesting story arcs and much better written “science fiction”. Some excellent allegories which highlighted modern issues, such as the absurdity of religious wars, political corruption and really good attempts at dealing with moral dilemmas.

Deep Space 9 (the space station series) had good stories but was ultimately dull. Voyager tried to go the other way with more action but lost it’s appeal because it didn’t also include the brain-engaging story lines of, oh I don’t know… yes I do: The Next Generation!

The less said about the latest “Enterprise” fiasco, the better.

Ironically, the original Star Trek movies (with Kirk etc) were MUCH better than the TNG movies!

Watch Mr Plinkett’s excellent dismantling of the mess that are recent Star Trek (and Star Wars) movies: http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-trek/star-trek-nemesis/

@Jason – about the structure of Catalyst, I like what Derek has to say about it. “It’s either ‘HELL YEAH!’ or no.”
https://sivers.org/hellyeah

Justin: “I just love looking out at the stars and wondering what we’ll discover among them”

Jason: “Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans”

Am I right?

🙂

The electrical engineering discussion about powering an access point with a higher rated power supply was incorrect. The current rating listed on your power supply simply indicates the maximum amount of current that the power supply can deliver at the rated voltage level. If rated at or above the access point current requirements, the power supply will only deliver the amount of current that the access point is drawing. So, if your access point draws less than 1A (which is typical of many consumer grade access points), then powering the access point with a 1A, or 5A, or 20A rated supply does not matter. The rating is not the source of your intermittent shutdown.

These type of power supplies (also called “wall warts” by some) are notorious for being cheaply constructed, so your best bet is to try a different one (rated at or above the access point’s current requirements).

Now if you try to use a smaller power supply (say, 500 mA) on your 1A access point, the access point may not power up or the power supply may fail. With a poorly made power supply, you might be able to turn the power supply into a nicely melted clump of plastic.

Anyway, I really hope we see more games like Dragonbox because it’s fun and it actually works!

You’re right about Titanium, though. It’s a bit scary and there are bugs in the platform, but I guess I’ve walked through the minefield enough at this point that I’m pretty sure I can get done what I need to.

Jason – you’re continued discussion about a DragonBox like game got me thinking – I bet you could make an interesting puzzle game using the trigonometric identities (http://www.sosmath.com/trig/Trig5/trig5/trig5.html). Make the story that you are a gem trader and you have to fill a customer’s order. Make a different colored gem stone for sin, cosine, tan (and their inverse for later levels). You can “trade” gems with other NPCs in the game but they make trade offers using valid trig rules (I’ll trade you a yellow stone for a half green/half blue, aka tan(x) = sin(x)/cos(x)). You could even handle things like cos^2 by making it a “double gem” or something. And there are whole textbooks filled with practice problems that you can harvest to had a huge selection of levels (cha-ching!).

Feel free to steal that idea (you or anyone) – I am not a game programmer myself but it was fun to think about 🙂

long time listener, first time commenter 🙂

I’ve been using Xamarin for 3 months and I think it’s perfect for cross-platform Apps. I have an App on the App Store and Google Play already, and the client is pretty happy with it. If there’s budget I’d still go for 2 native Apps but it’s the best compromise.
I played a bit with Titanium but I find it much more dangerous, it’s a level of abstraction too high for me and seems like it can break at any time with API changes on any of the platforms.
You Jason seem to have figured it out… I guess I’m concerned that you’ll find another problem like the drag and drop one but won’t be able to solve it. I’m curious to how it goes.

Great job guys, I enjoyed the episode as always!