Programming, Stuff

Measure Twice, Cut Twice

Posted on by Kumsal

According to general wisdom one should measure twice and cut once. This makes sense in most professions and even generally in life; when you should think twice and open your mouth once. However, again, generally in programming, we have this ++ approach. There was C then C++ came out. Looking at the list of programming languages on Wiki, I can see 8 records with ++ in their names. Not every ++ is related to the programming language it’s named after. For example R++ has nothing to do with R which is a statistical programming language whereas R++ itself is C++ related.

That being said, I’m going to take a naive approach and apply ++ logic to measure twice and cut once and make it measure twice and cut twice.  First and foremost, this is going to be an empirical approach and my basis for this theory is the experience I have gained in 15 years of building static and dynamic websites, web and desktop applications. However, I hope that it’ll make sense to most of you, especially to those who obsess about details and perfectionism.

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Portfolio, Programming

Pythonicus Addendum

Posted on by Kumsal
Posts in this series
  1. Pythonicus
  2. Pythonicus Addendum
  3. Pythonicus Finitum

In my previous Pythonicus article I briefly talked about my need to parse a list of NoSQL Databases at http://nosql-database.org. My solution back then was as it was presented in that article, using regular expressions to find child and sibling nodes. It was a bit crude but it got the job done.

I’m constantly fighting against the “get’er done” mentality on a daily basis so I’ll try to get the job done right this time by using BeautifulSoup. That’s actually where I left the article off so let’s see how tasty the soup is!

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Portfolio, Programming

Pythonicus

Posted on by Kumsal
Posts in this series
  1. Pythonicus
  2. Pythonicus Addendum
  3. Pythonicus Finitum

I started to learn Python in May. I finished two introductory courses about it on Coursera. Then, after a summer full of indecisiveness and frustration about where I want to take my skills to, I came to the conclusion that becoming a data scientist would be the right move. I guess that was around the last week of October. Since then, I’ve finished a third Python course and the fourth one is starting pretty soon.

I can already feel that I’ve opened the doors to a whole other world about computing and programming. My feelings about Data Science deserves another article so I’ll only focus on Python in this one. More specifically, how I approached a specific problem and how I’ve been able to produce the same results with better tools.

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Books, Game Design

Review : Introduction to Game Analysis

Posted on by Kumsal

Every now and often I have a miss in finding the right book for my game design and development work. Sometimes, either I don’t pay attention to the table of contents before I order books from my local public library or the excerpt is not clear enough and I decide to make my decision once I put my hands on it. This is one of those moments but it’s not the reason why I’m mentioning this book by  Clara Fernández-Vara, Introduction to Game Analysis.

That being said, the book is doing a very good job at dissecting the whole “game” into smaller bits described as context and elements. This feels more scientific and formal than what I’ve seen most game journalists do these days. Although I might be wrong, I see little value in reading this book for my game development needs. However, I would strongly recommend this book for anyone who is serious about game journalism or who’s in the academia studying ludology. It’s a bit too formal for my taste and needs. I’d like to share my thoughts in a more casual way.

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Portfolio

DigiScore AVP Productions

Posted on by Kumsal

 

A Kiosk application for DigiScore, an AV production company from Australia. Main goal was to showcase the client’s videos through a pleasant interface. The application is flexible enough to understand images and videos and respect folder structures so the client can organize their content freely. It has virtual keyboard support for people to type in and send emails to the company.

Designed 
Yes
Developed 
Yes
Technologies
Flex, Adobe AIR
No flash installed
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Game Design

I’m going Medieval

Posted on by Kumsal

I still think the best part of being a game designer is the research part. I’ve had this itch of making an RPG game for quite a while. The time has come for me to do research on medieval professions. It’s amazing to see how many occupations have been lost to time and how many of them have survived in one way or another.

I’ll group them by activity names such as Innkeeping, Potion Making, Clothing, Scholar, Smithing, Jewellery Making and General Crafting. The list will hold a name of the profession and a brief description next to it. I’m planning to keep adding as I go so here is the state of the list as of July 27th.

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Stuff

I’m Joomla about WordPress

Posted on by Kumsal

This is a story of commitment and disappointment, all with Joomla. This is also going to be a story about relief and respect, all with WordPress. This is another story, although personal if not professional, about which one sucks and the other one rocks! TL; DR? According to Urban Dictionary entry I’m not so Joomla about Joomla!

When it comes to comparing two things, the old saying of comparing apples to oranges is the most common pitfall one might fall into. However, I think I have seen enough similarities and differences with Joomla and WordPress so I can say that apples and oranges smell good, are juicy, are both fruit etc. So what differs them?

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