Apple, Thou Art A Bitter Fruit

 

After upgrading my early 2015 era Macbook Air to Apple's newest OS Big Sur I tried to download Godot to play around with it. Imagine my surprise when I wasn't "allowed" to open Godot because of Apple's over-zealous security measures.

I ended up having to go into the system preferences just to let Godot run.

I find this totally unacceptable. IMHO this is clearly an attempt to funnel all third party software through their app store and/or their developer program to "certify" that this software is okay to run.

Godot is a free and open source alternative to Unity and many people use it do develop indie games over Unity because it is free.

I know there are workaround for this sort of things and people may argue that I should do "X" or "Y" or "Z" but to me that's not the point. If I choose to distribute a game I make on itch.io, for example, and the game refuses to run because it may not be safe then Joe Normie is going to think I, and itch.io, are pushing some sort of Malware.

I'm not. Itch.io are not either. It's silly.

I'm very close to deciding that Apple and it's customers are not my target audience anymore. Which is sad as I used to be a big fan of Apple back in the day when they were the underdog. Back before OS X.

What's even more sad is that Microsoft has been going this way too. Download an open source project off the web and get all kinds of warnings that the software might not be safe. Again, IMHO, another veiled attempt to get you to go through Microsoft approved sites.

Maybe it's time to become a Linux only dev?

Fighting The Good Fight!

Looked up "silly" on the Internet. Was not disappointed.

The struggle is real my friend! Okay, just kidding.

That aside I got a bit of work done on the game today. Unfortunately it's a bit of underlying stuff so their is really nothing to show. It looks exactly like the image I uploaded yesterday when run so have a look at that if you want to see what it looks like today. Instead I'll find something silly to upload.

Today's work was making a texture class to wrap images I load up into it. The class handles rendering and will return the width and the height of a loaded image.

Home Sweet Home

Gaben!

[Billings, MT] Today was a long day and a tiring day but all in all a pleasant day. I got to see some family I hadn't seen in a long time. Unfortunately it threw off my driving schedule. I don't mind because I wasn't under a huge time constraint. I simply didn't want to be driving into Billings in the dark.

Unfortunately this means I'm home, gotten some food, gotten a shower and am almost ready for bed. It's pushing 10 pm right now and I am tired.

I was hoping to get a SDL project up on my Linux box and a "hello world" program going. Doesn't look like it's going to happen right now.

I Believe Tim Sweeney Is Right

An Oldie But Goody

[Williston, ND] Linux has been on my mind a lot lately. Even more since I read several articles about Tim Sweeney and his dislike for Windows 10 and what, potentially, Microsoft could do to turn Windows into a walled garden and kill off services like Steam.

Of course Sweeney is right. Even though it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t. I do remember the Microsoft of the 90s and what they attempted to do to squash competition. I don’t trust them. But then I do the stupid things and start reading the comments on these stories. People are either totally trusting in Microsoft or they don’t care. Or, maybe, they just trolling.

Self driving cars can't come fast enough!

So pretty but made me sick(er).

The self driving car, for me, can’t arrive fast enough!

Let me explain.

I live in Billings, MT. On the weekend of April 1st 2016 (actually March 31st) I drove to Missoula Montana to visit some friends and do some hiking. I hadn’t been in that neck of the woods in almost 11 years. It was long overdue. During the drive out there I had developed a cough that persisted the duration of the drive.

I remember thinking, “why am I coughing so much? What strange disease do I have?”

I finally arrived at Missoula and met up with one of my friends. We went to Pizza Hut where we both used to work in the early to mid 90s. We marveled at how much the place had changed. We ordered food and reminisced about the old days and all the silly/stupid/fun stuff we used to do. During this time my cough went away and, in the back of my mind, I thought that maybe I had kicked what was making me cough.

To Vlog or Not to Vlog

Producing a video blog every day? Yeah, right.

So, I've been trying to decide if I should vlog or not. For those who are not in the know a vlog is simply a (V)ideo B(log) that's posted to a video ingester and then people can play it back and watch how your life is going. The thing is most people have fairly boring lives so talking about what you had for dinner or how you felt when you woke up would get old fast. My life is like that and a vlog would risk becoming redundant very quickly. So, if I did it I would need to do it as a way to get out of my own comfort zone and do strange new things every day. At least to have something to talk about.

I've been in that mood lately. The one where you look at your life and say, "wait a minute! I was going to do <insert bucket list items> before I died." Well, the simple fact for me is that I turned 48 on my birthday back in February and had the realization that the number of useful years I have left could be disappearing and quickly. So I really need to do something with my life. It might give younger people some comfort knowing that not all of us older folks know what we want from life. And, the fact is that most simply settle for their lot in life. To me that's sad.

Et Tu Facebook...Apparently My Page Is For Those 21 And Older

Yeah, so I should have used a white font with a black stroke.

So, I have a Facebook Page and I like to try and get people to like my page if not for the quirky and slightly strange sense of humor I have. The world needs more people like that. Of course that page supports a YouTube gaming channel that I seem to totally ignore even though I got partnered with Maker Studio. I think if I participated more that I'd probably make some descent money doing the YouTube thing.

Anyway, so I decide I'm going to promote my page by spending a few hard earned sheckles on some advertising. I go through the process of setting up some advertising. I've had other pages where I've used boosts and advertising to good success in driving traffic to my page. I thought I'd do it for this one too.