matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

Sew, you are probably aware that I am going to a convention and cosplaying this year. Using a sewing machine kindly borrowed from my sisters, I laid down the first stitches to that end today.

I spent the first thirty minutes battling the contraption before I decided to just google the damn thing. I eventually stumbled upon some scrap book sewing how to video that happened to be using mostly the same model of machine I had (same machine, different paint job).

After watching all twentyish minutes of tutorial, I was finally up and running and created a successful debug output piece.

With all the pre-work out of the way, I got started on one of the pieces. It turned out pretty shitty and I've got nine more to go...

Ha! Now there's a title!

This year my bros and I will be attending Tokyo in Tulsa - a local anime convention - much as we did last year. However, this year not only will we be splurging on all three days, but we'll be shedding all our inhibitions and cosplaying. Well, at the very least I will. This is my fourth con, after all.

In addition to the costume getup itself, I am using this as an excuse to get my sorry ass into better shape. Since I've started my new job, I've been spending most of my lunch breaks climbing the stairs to the top of the building, about seventeen floors. In addition, lately I have also been walking around the small park adjacent to the building after said stair climbing (about a third of a mile or so).

Now, however, I will be stepping it up even more. My apartment has a pretty decent exercise facility and I plan to take advantage of it. So, tonight when everybody else has gone to sleep, I and my iPhone will make a trip across to the office and I will hit the treadmills.

My goal is that in the month and a half until the con, I can lose some of the fat roll and maybe even bring myself under 200 again. Honestly, that last part wouldn't be too much of a stretch - couple pounds a week, really.

So shall it be written, so shall it be done!

After Friday's more technical post, today I strive to show actual progress on what I've deemed to call JsLive.

Today I got a basic graphics stack implemented and working, though it's riddled with its fair share of bugs and is certainly nowhere near being feature complete (environmental objects, animation, etc). However, I'm having no problem running through entire scenario files having completed the first day in Kanon with no problems. But, on to the screenshots (note - the following where all taken in Chrome 12.0.712.0 dev)!

Because my ultimate goal is to have this working for mobile platforms, I've been testing against my iPhone (at least until I've got an iPad). Here's some screens:

I haven't yet implemented scaling to the device's screen size (the screen above was pinch-zoomed to the correct size).

I'm okay with the graphics stack for the time being, so I'm going to begin work on one of the last major hurdles with jumping between different scenario files. I'm hoping to have an open beta up soon and hopefully get some feedback from people with various devices.

Stay tuned!

Somewhere around the time I began working at Wal-Mart, I thought it would be a nice challenge to write an NES emulator. One of these days I'll release my mess of source code for that, but it was probably one of the most awesome programming challenges I've ever undertaken. So, why am I waxing nostalgic about this project from nearly six years ago? (warning - there's technical programmy talk inside)

If you were unfortunate enough to have sat through my top 5 anime video, you'll know that Clannad was pretty high up there on the list (number one, to be exact). To this day, I still consider it my favorite anime so when I wandered past a "Clannad - Motion Picture" DVD at Hastings, I had to rent it even though I knew it was going to be terrible.

I had no idea just how bad it was going to be. Ah, where to begin?